


Read Our Futures in the Rising Steam

by xzombiexkittenx



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BAMF!John, Case Fic, Drug Use, Implied Torture, M/M, Rape/Non-con References, Virgin Sherlock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-04 10:17:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/392762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xzombiexkittenx/pseuds/xzombiexkittenx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An unknown killer begins kidnapping and vivisecting men who bear a strong resemblance to one John Watson. Lestrade wants both John and a newly-resurrected Sherlock as far away from the case as possible- and not just because Sherlock is the Met's prime suspect. But this is a case that Sherlock, still feeling out the limits of John's grief and his own guilt, can't just ignore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Read Our Futures in the Rising Steam

It’s a slow day, evening now, and John keeps peeping around his book at Sherlock, as though Sherlock is about to start shooting walls, taking coke, or leaping off buildings at any second. It’s not hard to see that whatever anger John was harbouring at Sherlock’s absence is long gone. Now that they’re both safely ensconced in 221B, their kitchen table covered in stolen science equipment (it calms John to have something to fuss at Sherlock about), John in his chair and Sherlock prone on the sofa, it’s up to Sherlock to continue to reinforce John’s trust. The sooner John trusts him not to leave again, the sooner he will stop peering at Sherlock with such a crumpled, worried expression every thirty seconds. He finds it distracting as he keeps focusing on it, even though he understands perfectly well why John is doing it.

His phone goes off. Lestrade, he’s certain of it. He hopes this case is more interesting than the last. He solved the last one before he even saw the body and Anderson was there to round off a perfectly vile afternoon.

“John,” Sherlock says, holding out a hand for his phone.

Pre-roof, John would have been looking at him with a mixture of annoyance and amusement. Now though, he gets Sherlock the phone with his face carefully blank. John is constantly protecting himself during their every interaction. Sherlock is doing his best to keep their interactions as free of potential abandonment as possible. He’s sure that eventually John will relax. But it’s been months and John still looks at him like he’s going to vanish at any second.

“I’m going out in ten minutes, so whatever it is will have to wait if you want me along.”

John’s girlfriend – his latest attempt at putting some distance between himself and Sherlock – is coming by and then they’re going out for dinner. She’s going to break up with him. She’s the type to tell him ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ rather than the truth, which is that she can’t stand Sherlock, and she resents their relationship.

If John asks, Sherlock is going to tell him that he’s deleted her because he knew she was going to break up with him before she even invited him out to dinner. This is only partially true. He won’t delete her. He can’t. It’s relevant data. She’s part of John’s life, therefore: relevant data. He remembers all of John’s partners, whether he likes it or not.

Bart’s morgue  
bring JW  
L

It’s going to take Laura five more minutes to get here. Another to steel herself for an unpleasant evening. She’ll try to be polite to Sherlock, which means he can cut down on their travel time by at least two and a half minutes by going into his room, or simply ignoring her when she comes in. But then John will waste fifteen seconds scolding him for his rudeness and another half-minute apologising to Laura. Better to just make himself scarce.

They’ll stroll to the restaurant, Laura will order a glass of mediocre plonk and John will get a half-pint. She’ll wait until they’ve ordered starters, but will tell the waitron that they’ll order their main after their starters. She’ll break up with John before they’re finished their starters.

John is used to this sort of thing now. He’ll be hurt but not surprised. He’ll pay the tab and go for a walk.

Sherlock estimates that if he texts John in thirty-nine minutes John will be near the Edgeware tube stop where there are always an abundance of cabs, or, if John wishes to be tiresome, he can take the underground.

He gets up, drawing his dressing gown around himself and retreats to his room. He’s dressed and ready to go in three minutes. He doesn’t want to wait for thirty-six minutes for John to be available to him. Sherlock pulls his gloves on, while John putters about the kitchen.

“We have a case,” he says.

“I have a date,” John says, convincing himself.

Sherlock laces his fingers together, thumbs tucked under his chin, index fingers steepled against his lips. In thirty-six minutes, plus travel time, he’ll have seen the body and be on the move, and he’ll have to wait for ages for John to catch up, physically, and mentally.

John closes the fridge. He stands in front of Sherlock at parade rest. “What?” he says. He’s standing close enough that he has to look up, just a little, at Sherlock. Sherlock discovered a long time ago that he liked it. What surprises him is that he likes it every single time and it’s not getting tiresome.

“Sherlock,” John says. “Just tell me.”

He can’t calculate if John will be more annoyed if he pre-empts the break-up or if he doesn’t and John realizes he knew, and didn’t say anything. “It’s nothing,” he says, turning away, sweeping out the door. It doesn’t matter if John is annoyed now or later, he’ll still follow. “I’ll text you,” he calls back. He means: I won’t disappear.

He’s waving for a cab when Laura walks up to the flat. She doesn’t see him as she hesitates in front of the door. Sherlock starts the countdown.

X X X

It’s not you, it’s her.  
Bart’s morgue  
SH

Its not her its you  
JW

Take a cab, a jumper made a mess of the Tube.  
SH

You knew didnt you  
JW

wouldve happily skipped it  
JW

R u still @ Barts?  
JW

Sherlock are you still at Barts?  
JW

Sherlock txt me back  
JW

X X X

Sherlock and Lestrade are standing outside Bart’s not smoking when John’s taxi pulls up. Much to Sherlock’s frustration, Lestrade had refused to let him in without John. He probably shouldn’t have texted John while Laura was in the middle of explaining why they should be friends, but the waiting is intolerable.

John gets out of the cab with a heavy step. His psychosomatic limp is acting up again. This case will be good for both of them, then. As will the realization that when Sherlock asks him to meet him somewhere, he will not be about to leap off any ledges. He can see John ease down. His heart rate, elevated, is slowing again. It’s cruel, Sherlock knows, not to respond immediately to John’s distress, but this will be better for them both, in the long run.

“You could have told me beforehand,” John says, looking more tired than usual. “Saved me the trouble.”

Sherlock cocks an eyebrow. “Or not told you at all.”

John concedes the point by the slant of his shoulders, and the way the smile-lines at the corners of his eyes deepen. “Why are we standing outside?” he asks. He’s cold. His coat is not nearly warm enough for the weather. Sherlock wonders if it would be permissible to buy him a nice wool jacket. A thigh-length pea coat, he thinks, would be ideal. A little naval, but still. 

“Look,” Lestrade says to Sherlock. “I know you’re back from the dead and exonerated and all, but the fact of it is, you’re going to have to tread lightly. No one knows I’ve brought you here. Not the chief superintendent, not anyone and if this gets out I’m not going to be given a slap on the wrist, or stuck behind a desk. I’m going to jail, so’s John, so are we all. So no blogging about it, no talking to your brother, no haring off without me. You have to follow my lead like…like John’s life depends on it.”

John pales. The last time his life depended on Sherlock, Sherlock stepped off the roof of Bart’s and disappeared.

“You have belaboured the point quite enough,” Sherlock says. “If it’s not too much trouble.”

There are five body bags laid out, waiting. Molly is twisting her hands together and she’s picked at her winter-chapped lips until she made herself bleed. Sherlock, despite all the waiting, and posturing, is interested. 

They’ve closed ranks again. Molly, Lestrade, John, and him. It’s…comforting. All they need now is Mrs. Hudson bringing them tea and biscuits. 

“Serial killer,” he says, and Lestrade nods. “White male in his late twenties to thirties,” Sherlock says, and when Molly looks startled, adds, “We are talking about a serial killer. They’re all white males in their late twenties to thirties.”

“Jeffery Hope wasn’t,” John points out, and Lestrade covers his laugh with a cough.

“Who?” Sherlock asks.

“The cabbie,” John says, at the same time Lestrade says, “How can you not know that name?”

Sherlock doesn’t quite manage to refrain from rolling his eyes. “Yes, yes, alright. Shall we get on with it?” He knows John isn’t fooled by his nonchalance and his mouth curls up in one corner in a smile. John’s eyebrows draw together, ever so slightly, but it’s his way of not smiling along with Sherlock, and they both know it.

“Doctor Hooper,” Lestrade says. “Might as well get this bit done with.”

Sherlock can already see that the bodies are all of a comparable height, somewhere between five six and five eight. A little shorter than the average British male. Molly starts unzipping the bags and the obvious similarities of the victims means this killer has a specific type – either some sort of psycho-sexual desire he’s filling, or displaced anger at his actual intended target. All male, solid build – slight variants where one was in finances, one in construction, a chemistry teacher at a private boys’ school, and two Boots employees…no, one worked at a Primark, next to a Boots. Caucasian, late thirties, dishwater brown hair greying. Not especially handsome men by media standards, but…how had Mrs. Hudson put it? Smouldering. Damply. Like a peat fire. 

“You can see the problem,” Lestrade says.

Sherlock can see the order in which they were killed. The murderer is growing bolder. There are less hesitation marks with the knife - no, scalpel. The first victim, Boots employee, was killed outright, throat slit, right to left, right-handed murderer. Not much of interest, except for the missing fingers where he tried to get his hand between his throat and the knife, and the large chunks of flesh removed from the shoulder and thigh.

Second victim, teacher. Killed with no hesitation. Opened up, throat to sternum with hesitation. Organs rummaged through. Bits missing from the shoulder and thigh again.

Third victim, Primark. Raped with an object – either as humiliation or the killer couldn’t maintain an erection – flesh from shoulder and thigh removed pre-mortem, throat cut, properly dissected, all organs in the body cavity are missing. 

Fourth victim, banker. Raped by the killer – obviously the killer had hesitated previously but was now in the swing of things - flesh from shoulder and thigh removed pre-mortem, throat cut, properly dissected, organs missing. Organs replaced with the organs of the previous victim except for the heart. Obvious.

Fifth victim, construction worker. Raped. Lack of obvious cause of death. No, cause of death is perfectly, obvious; trauma and blood loss. Vivisected.

“Bloody hell,” John says.

“Half the press are calling him the Baker Street Butcher and the other half is calling them the new Ripper murders.” Lestrade wants a cigarette. His fingers rub together and he keeps touching his mouth.

Baker Street? What on earth has Baker Street to do with-

“Look with your eyes,” John says. “Not with your brain.” A nonsense statement which Sherlock ignores as he puts together all the pieces. It hits him like a train. All the victims, who have been taken apart and examined (and sexually assaulted), look like John Watson. 

…everyone thinks he’s the one doing it. 

“Ah,” Sherlock says.

“Should I be worried?” John asks. John, who never believed the lies. 

“You don’t-” Sherlock starts, hurt, instinctively hiding it under a waspish tone.

“Not about you, you berk,” John says dismissively. He’s looking at Lestrade. “Do I need to be worried about the maniac who’s doing this?”

Lestrade rubs at his jaw. “I want to take you into protective custody.”

“Absolutely not,” Sherlock says at about the same time John says, “Not a chance.” They’re standing too close. Sherlock knows this. John is sparing himself some psychosomatic pain by putting his weight on his other leg, so he’s leaning ever so slightly towards Sherlock who is standing close enough that their coats are touching. They’ve been doing that a lot, post-fall. Sherlock knows why he’s doing it, but he’s not sure if John has even noticed. It seems to him that John is in constant readiness to catch hold of him, as though they were still handcuffed together. 

It might help John’s pain, actually, to just go ahead and cuff them. Sherlock suspects that he’d still get free use of his arms, so long as he could (and he could) ignore John’s protests.

“You’ve already washed the bodies,” Sherlock points out. “What, exactly, can I tell you that a medical examiner could not?” Probably a lot, if he put his mind to it, but he doubts they want to know intimate details of the victims’ lives. It won’t tell them anything about the killer.

“Nothing,” Lestrade says. “I don’t want you on this case; I don’t want either of you anywhere near it. Take a vacation, get out of London. Get yourselves an alibi other than each other, or Mrs. Hudson.” He nods at Molly who dutifully begins zipping the body bags closed, much to Sherlock’s annoyance. He is in no way finished looking at them.

Sherlock is not impressed, to say the least. Not that he’s ever _impressed_ with Lestrade, but still. “You expect me to just-”

“Yes,” Lestrade snaps. “Yes, I do. I don’t give a monkey’s how interested you are.”

Molly hesitates, the face of the third victim still visible, zipper drawn up to the body’s chin. “I have a pullout,” she says, tentatively.

“That won’t be necessary,” John says, far more harshly than Sherlock would have predicted. Although, she had been the one to draw John away when Sherlock was headed up to the roof and help out afterwards, but that was hardly her fault. “We’ll figure it out.”

Lestrade sighs.

“We’re not leaving Baker Street,” Sherlock says, in the cab home. “We can find the murderer far faster than the Met. Just a serial killer, hardly a challenge.” John is silent. “What?” Sherlock says.

“We’ll talk about it at home,” John says, stone-faced. When Sherlock demands to know why, John grits out, “Because I’m going to bloody throttle you, and I’d rather not do it in front of the cabbie.”

They spend the rest of the journey in a hostile silence. Or, rather, John is hostile, and Sherlock utilizes the time to calculate how best to persuade John that he – as always – is in the right. Obviously John is highly emotional and Sherlock can appreciate why, he just doesn’t see why _feelings_ based on something that happened ages ago should have any bearing on the matter.

X X X

Sherlock, do what the detective  
inspector says  
MH

I will kidnap the both of you  
MH

You can’t ignore me forever  
MH

Back off  
JW

X X X

The first person to whom Sherlock revealed he was still alive was John. The only person to whom Sherlock revealed he was still alive was John, and it was John who notified Mrs. Hudson (best to break the news gently, John said), Lestrade – and through Lestrade the rest of the force – and all other interested parties including Mycroft because John might be furious at Mycroft but John’s not the sort to let a man think his own brother is dead.

John had, at first, seemed to look right through him but upon further evidence that Sherlock was not some figment of his imagination, had fainted. Passed out stone cold. Sherlock would like to tease him about it, but John can’t bear any mention of Sherlock’s disappearance so he keeps his amusement to himself.

John’s violently emotional reaction to their reunion – fainting, shouting, hugging, a few tears – clearly indicates that he’s going to have a proportionally large outburst at the thought of anyone trying to threaten their status quo. The colloquial expression for what’s going to happen next, as far as Sherlock knows, is ‘getting ripped a new asshole.’ 

Sherlock flops down on the sofa, fully prepared to let John get the yelling out of his system before he begins his counter arguments. They have crime scenes to break into.

Instead of yelling, John very carefully takes off his coat, and his shoes, and then stands there in his absurd button-down jumper, neatly ironed plaid shirt, and jeans. There was a hole in his sock, three days ago, but John darned it, rather than buy new ones. “You _died_ ,” John says. “I buried you, and everywhere I went people thought you were a murderer, and a liar, and no one believed that you were…” He takes a deep breath and collects himself. “You left me, Sherlock. I won’t go through that again.”

This is one of those situations where having a rudimentary grasp of complicated emotions like grief would come in extremely useful. Probably it feels like trying to convince John that he was a fraud but Sherlock never wants to think about that in any sort of detail ever again, so it’s not helping him now.

John sits down on the sofa next to Sherlock. “Without you, I’m just a sad bastard sitting around reading his own old blog entries. I actually asked Mycroft to get me back into the army.”

Sherlock is aghast and sits bolt upright. “I’m glad he had the common sense to say no.”

“He said you wouldn’t’ve wanted it so he wouldn’t do it.” John looks very small next to him. “I threatened to take it up the chain of command, he threatened to disappear me.”

Sherlock is going to have extremely loud words with his brother just as soon as he can bear to talk to him. “But I’m right here. It’s fine. Obviously.”

John’s hands are suddenly warm and rough on Sherlock’s face, and Sherlock can feel John’s heart racing. “You’re a blithering idiot sometimes,” John says and when Sherlock opens his mouth to protest, John kisses him.

The first thing that Sherlock says, when John has sat back, red-faced with what is clearly embarrassment, is, “You’re straight.” Not, he will admit, really the point but John winces a little.

John “confirmed bachelor” Watson is straight and while he’s stopped protesting assumptions he and Sherlock are together and started joking about it, and now he’s making sudden advances on the sofa, he’s still straight. He’s straight, and Sherlock is…He is. He just is. Cogito Ergo Sum. Although if thinking is what makes a person, then Sherlock and Mycroft, damn him, are possibly the only people who exist in London. 

“Yeah,” John agrees. “It’s probably an adrenaline thing. I don’t know. You drive me mental because it’s not like we run out of murderers to catch or nutters trying to kill us, or you managing to blow up the kitchen because you’re bored…” 

Sherlock puts two and two together. “No shortage of adrenaline,” he says, mildly disappointed. Is he disappointed? Why is he disappointed?

John’s left hand is shaking, ever so slightly, but so is his right. Nerves then. At least he understands that this is important. “No,” John says, drawn out, like Sherlock’s missing something. Unlikely.

The entire thing is getting right away from Sherlock and it’s starting to make him feel strangely uncomfortable. Something is seriously amiss. It is a rare occasion that someone is able to make him feel uncomfortable but The Conversation he’s about to have with John is enough to do it.

“I don’t…” Sherlock says. He knows perfectly well how to explain – John is sexual (and straight, as all the data proves!), he is not – but laying it out so John comprehends…that’s another matter altogether.

“Never?” John asks. “I mean, I figured at some point…Not even?”

Sherlock closes his eyes, wondering if it will make the conversation any more bearable. “No, never, not at any point. Yes, I do, if you’re asking if I masturbate, though rarely and occasionally without result. And before you ask, Doctor, there is nothing physically wrong with me. Nor, I would say, is there anything _wrong_ mentally-”

John laughs, a nervous guffaw. “Well,” he says.

“Oh do shut up,” Sherlock says, but can’t quite keep a straight face.

“What about the rest of it?” John asks when they’ve finished tittering like schoolgirls.

Sherlock, to his annoyance, has no idea what ‘the rest’ is. Evidently his confusion is clear to John because John flaps a hand at him in an unhelpful sort of way. “Non-sexual close contact,” he says, in his professional voice. “Kissing, for example.”

“I find most people to be a waste of carbon and most people find me…difficult. The odds of stumbling across someone who would want to share a non-sexual relationship with me, and with whom I would share such a thing, are long indeed.” Sherlock sounds petulant even to his own ears.

John doesn’t look pitying, which is good, because Sherlock is very much prepared to unleash a rant of such vitriol that can only come from being asked the same stupid questions and receiving the same stupid replies time, after time, after time. Instead, John looks sympathetic. “I had a girlfriend with a much higher sex-drive,” he says. “Put a bit of a strain on things. Er, the relationship.” He nods firmly, like he’s figured something out. “I won’t ask again,” he says.

This, weirdly, is not the answer Sherlock wants or even completely understands. There was an element to this conversation that he has missed, utterly. “Good, thanks,” he says and stands, ostensibly to check on the strips of skin in the oven, but more to remove himself from the conversation.

On the up side, at least John isn’t talking about leaving Baker Street and letting Lestrade and his idiots handle the case, or other nonsense.

John turns on the telly, says, “Hungry?” (the answer is no, but John in an embarrassingly English way always gets too much food from the Indian place a couple streets over and Sherlock will pick at the leftovers because it makes John happy to see him eat), and they talk no more about it, but Sherlock is unsettled and anxious; emotions he rarely suffers from – well, when they’re not withdrawal related that is – and it’s a feeling of being below average, like he’s somehow lacking. It’s not something he’s used to.

Hours later, after John has gone to bed – he’ll dream of Afghanistan tonight – Sherlock lies under his own sheets, pyjama bottoms around his knees, and attempts to get himself off. He doesn’t like being unable to succeed at something. It takes a few long minutes of concentrated effort to spin a fantasy in his head. He imagines the first case that he and John worked together. In this scenario however, when the case is closed instead of Sherlock going to John, John joins him in the ambulance. His hands are still warm from washing off the GSR, his expression still calm stoicism. John snaps on latex gloves and…

Sherlock closes his eyes and thumbs at the glans on his cock. What comes next is inevitably some tawdry dialogue like, “Better give you a proper check,” or something equally awful. He skips ahead to the nudity portion of things. But then, he dislikes being naked, especially when it’s anything but very warm out, and it feels invasive to imagine John that way.

He tries anyway, for the sake of the experiment. John would be pale, somewhere there’d be a birthmark, the scars any adventurous young boy accumulates over the years. Grey and blond chest hair. None where the scar on his shoulder…

Sherlock is hard mostly due to friction and not through any real interest in the proceedings. He’s snagged the barely used Vaseline from the nightstand, two fingers rubbing roughly over his prostate when it hits him.

The scar on his shoulder.

John has called it by many names, the light bulb moment, the a-ha! effect, but his best analysis was to describe it as a dialogue box from a computer’s OS letting you know it’s updated and needs to be restarted and you can’t do anything else until you click away from that popup. Sherlock is having that moment.

He barely remembers to wipe his hands and pull up his pyjama bottoms before rushing up the stairs to throw open John’s bedroom door. “The legs!” he exclaims.

John sits bolt upright, reaching for his L85A2 rifle that isn’t there. “Sherlock?” he asks, eyes full of mountains and convoys.

“Think, John,” Sherlock says. “The flesh missing from the bodies – the shoulder and thigh – the killer is going from faulty observation, not concrete fact and data. Lestrade was correct, you are the target of the murderer’s obsession and he removes the flesh from those places because of your gunshot wound, and rightly so. But he also supposes you to have a corresponding wound on your thigh. The killer doesn’t know your limp is psychosomatic! Don’t you see?”

John relaxes. “It’s three in the morning.” It’s two fifty-seven, to be precise. “Don’t phone Lestrade-”

“But I’m demonstratively not the culprit,” Sherlock says, “since I’m fully aware you have no actual, physical damage to your thigh. We may stay here, without fear of arrest.” That, he thinks, ought to convince John as to the wisdom of remaining in London.

But then, John doesn’t appear convinced. He runs his hands through his hair so it sticks up in all directions. He looks like a disgruntled hedgehog. “Sherlock,” he says in a patient sort of way, “It’s three in the morning.”

“Two fifty-eight.”

“I’m sleeping.”

Sherlock realizes he’s never actually seen John’s leg. “You don’t have scar tissue there, do you?”

“Goodnight, Sherlock.” John lies back down, pointedly. “Close the door when you go?”

Sherlock, despite what some may believe, has excellent impulse control and so he only takes two steps towards John’s bed to see for himself, before stopping. “In the morning then,” he says, already texting Lestrade. “And I’ll want to see your leg.”

He’s down the stairs when he hears John’s feet padding across the floor, the door closing. Whoops.

Sherlock has a great deal of very important thinking to do, so he pulls up a new message and starts typing.

X X X

You’ll find payment  
in our usual place  
SH

Stuf in othr usl  
place. U evr sleep?  
lol

X X X

Sherlock hasn’t slept. Now that he can focus wholeheartedly on finding the killer – rather than proving conclusively to John that he is not a depraved lunatic bent on raping and murdering his closest friend – he intends to do just that. 

The fuck of it is, Mycroft has been apologising for grossly violating Sherlock’s trust by not pointing _every_ camera in London at Sherlock, even though he wants to, and Sherlock has been masterfully avoiding those that Mycroft is still utilizing. It makes it rather hard to prove his whereabouts at any given moment in time. Still, there will be another murder and Sherlock will have to contrive to be somewhere public, in view of CCTV, and possibly a policeman or two.

For the moment though, Sherlock is fully dressed and perched in the window of the lavatory at 221B, one leg dangling down onto the lip of the tub, the other crammed up into the window with the rest of him. The window frame is digging uncomfortably into his thigh. It is not the most dignified position he has ever been in.

He’s picked up an old habit or two during his time away from London and the people he has come to realise are his friends. Smoking, which John knows about because he’s not an idiot and Sherlock is legitimately trying to quit again so he’s made no secret of it. He’s also started taking cocaine again, and he’s certain that John will neither understand, nor handle this information well.

Track marks aren’t hard to hide. It’s not as though he and John spend any amount of time in the altogether together so he hasn’t had to resort to anal suppositories but he’s taken to injecting the veins in the backs of his knees and his thighs which makes him feel like he’s hiding it. He is hiding it. He shouldn’t have to hide it. He’ll come up with a way to explain it to John and then he won’t have to.

Now though, he needs to zero his attention in on the case. It’s been three point six minutes, the tinnitus has faded; he’s at his peak mental ability. He’s on his third bump of the night. Morning. Whatever it is now. Morning. Six thirty-two am.

He’s been to five abduction sites, five dump sites, and broken in to four of the victims’ domiciles. Sherlock feels electric.

He visited the body dump sites during the wee hours of the morning, and all of them were contaminated beyond usefulness as the scenes had been released and hosts of people had tramped all over them. The victims’ flats however… 

The victims lived dull, ordinary little lives, nothing exceptional between them. The first was an avid cinephile who mostly stayed in and never even had a parking ticket or detention. The second had a fairly crippling online gambling habit and owed several dangerous people money. The third had stabbed a man in a bar fight, though the man had lived and he’d done only minimal jail time. The fourth had gone to med school but had dropped out, unable to stomach the less academic parts of the job and decided there was more money and less rigor mortis in banking. He was moderately interested to see what John Five was like before he was murdered.

Sherlock is having trouble thinking of the victims in his usual dispassionate way. He keeps mentally referring to them as John One, John Two, etc. It isn’t helpful. 

John Watson opens the door and sighs. “You said you weren’t smoking in the flat,” he says.

Sherlock flicks ash off the end of his cigarette and shrugs a shoulder. “As I recall, at that moment, I wasn’t.” 

“Put it out,” John says, turning the tub on in what Sherlock supposes is a hint for him to leave so John can shower. 

No matter what little quirks the victims have not one of them is remotely as interesting as John Watson. They’d never come face to face with serial killers and walked away, they’d never argued down Mycroft (which, to be fair, isn’t so different, in the end). They went about their business without ever having killed to save lives and saved lives to allow more killing. They had never tried to sacrifice themselves, or been sacrificed for. They couldn’t explain the complexities of social niceties because they’d never had to hide that their hands that were only truly steady when staring down the sight of a gun and they aren’t anything at all like his John.

None of those other Johns knew how Sherlock likes his tea, or let him order them around even though they could probably kill him in as many ways as Sherlock himself can imagine. They didn’t remind him to eat, or pay him honest little compliments and guide him through the tedious business of talking to people without getting hit. They are not his John, and whoever is working his way up to it cannot have the only John that matters.

“May I see your leg now?” Sherlock asks, lazily taking another drag. His heart is racing and he can feel its every pulse in every part of his body. This is as close as his body gets to mistaking one sort of arousal for another. God, he’d missed this feeling.

Sherlock is certain the killer has recognized the complexities and paradoxes that make up John Watson and wants it for his own. He has to laud the man’s choice but John is pretty much the only person he would step off a roof for (he’s not sure, even now, if he would have done it had Moriarty just threatened Mrs. Hudson and Lestrade and he thinks he should probably be ashamed of himself. He’s not. They would be unacceptable but survivable losses) and every day that John doesn’t throw up his hands and move out of 221B is another day he has chosen to stay with Sherlock. While it’s nice to have validation, Sherlock does not require someone trying to take John away from him to know what it is he has. 

He needs to focus.

Johns one through four did not frequent the same pubs, the same corner shops, the same grocery stores. They had four degrees of separation, at their closest and going to the same school as a half-brother’s (that they were unaware of) ex-girlfriend’s kid’s father was a very tenuous link indeed. Different social spheres, different classes, came from and lived in different parts of London. Two of them weren’t from London at all.

“Will you get out then?” John counters. John doesn’t look annoyed though; he’s rolling his eyes and trying not to smile. He doesn’t wait for the answer but wraps a towel around his waist and drops his tracky-bums and stands there. Sherlock is extremely pleased by John’s compliance and he completely fails to conceal that. John’s compliance is…it appeals to some dark part of him that he doesn’t care to examine too closely. Not right now.

John is pale and his body hair is sparse and pale too. There is more hair around his ankles than midway up his calf and almost nothing at all on his thighs. He has old, faded marks on his knees from childhood scrapes, tiny dents in his shinbones that would feel rough under Sherlock’s fingers from normal knocks and bumps over the years. There is no scar on his thigh. Any pain is from nerve damage. 

There is no connection between the victims. They were random, utterly random, save for their distinct similarity to Sherlock’s John. So how did the killer find them? John isn’t an especially odd-looking man, but he isn’t featureless either and Johns One to Five could have been brothers. Fraternal twins even. Imperfect copies, but copies nevertheless.

As far as Sherlock is aware there is no search engine or social networking site that will find him ‘people who look like John Hamish Watson’ and their information. 

Sherlock flicks the fag end of the cigarette out the window and climbs down. “As I said,” Sherlock says. In the small space, he’s very close to John. Close enough that John has to look up at him, just like the day before, close enough that Sherlock can feel the heat of John’s skin. Still enjoyable.

“If this is an experiment,” John says, audibly swallowing, looking away, “please don’t.”

“Don’t what?” Sherlock asks. He wants to see John’s shoulder. He plucks at John’s jumper. “Let me see your shoulder.”

Sherlock has been collecting vital details about John: DNA, x-rays, dental records, and such. He never wants to stand in a morgue _wondering_. And if it’s John, if it’s ever John lying on Molly’s table, he’s not confidant in his ability to be unemotional about it. He’s as certain as it is possible to be that he’ll prove to be spectacularly ridiculous in his reactions. Sherlock has the nagging sensation he’s already being a little ridiculous and John hasn’t even been inconvenienced, never mind actually harmed, at this point.

Because right now he doesn’t actually want to go and look at John Five’s flat. He wants his John to strip down and let Sherlock examine every inch of him, just in case it ever comes in useful. He wants to be able to identify John, to find John, even if he’s bereft of most senses. John’s the doctor, not him, and he’ll need to be thorough, so thorough, so that he understands every identifiable detail.

John isn’t smiling any more but he pulls his sweatshirt off and his t-shirt. “Can I shower now?” he asks.

Even Sherlock knows better than to ask to touch the scars, but oh how he wants to. There’s a bruise on John’s left forearm from falling asleep at the desk earlier in the week. His calluses are starting to peel and his tan line is less noticeable, probably most people wouldn’t see it at all. John has muscle under a softer, deceptive layer of fat, just like his temper under his stoicism, the soldier hiding under the doctor. 

“Be quick about it,” Sherlock says, already on his way to the kitchen. “We’re going out.”

John calls after him, “Learn to shut the door!”

Sherlock isn’t one for needless profiling; the inner workings of the mind of a killer are not relevant. The man responsible is obsessed with John Watson, probably because of the media exposure, and is displaying symptoms of erotomania. His obsessional behaviour will culminate in him attempting to kidnap John. Another victim and crime scene that he would be allowed to look at would be very helpful.

Keep that to himself. John wouldn’t like it.

The first victim was abducted on his way home from the Boots where he worked. The store shut at nine o’clock and he usually closed, but a co-worker and he had switched shifts so the victim had headed out at four o’clock instead. Either he was being very closely followed, or it was a crime of opportunity – not likely for this sort of abduction. All the others were abducted at quiet moments when no one would have noticed their absence. This killer is not concerned about that part of the event. He is organized and cautious. Likely he is already stalking John.

Sherlock is dressed and ready to go, and rearranged his entire book system when John finally appears. “Shoulder holster,” he notes. John nods and pulls his jacket over it. Sherlock can see the outline of the Sig Saur but no one else will be able to. Sherlock is collecting John’s secrets, hoarding them away on his hard-drive where no one else can have them.

They catch a cab to John Five- to the fifth victim’s house with John quietly complaining most of the way there, and Sherlock trying very hard not to let his leg bounce up and down like it wants to. He stares out the window to conceal the size of his pupils. 

“What can you possibly find here?” John asks, as Sherlock picks the lock to the flat. “He wasn’t killed here, he wasn’t taken from here. If the victims are being chosen for their appearance, then his life, his flat, has nothing to do with why he died.”

“Hunting ground,” Sherlock says, slipping the picks back into his coat and rising from his crouch. “We need to know where the killer finds his victims. London is a big city and none of the Jo- none of the victims were from the same area.” None of the other victims were actually called John at all. Sherlock doesn’t remember any of their names. 

He strides in, John trailing dutifully after him.

“Lestrade’s going to kill us,” John says, hands at his side, watching as Sherlock examines the flat. “Actually kill us. Do you even know when the un-sub-” 

“I beg your pardon?”

John rolls his eyes. “Unknown subject, it’s from, look, that’s not important. Do you even know when the murderer first saw them? Without a timeline-”

Sherlock doesn’t bother turning around, instead going through the messy pile of crumpled corner shop receipts, movie ticket stubs, and bank statements that John Five pulled out of his wallet to sort through later. “The first murder was two months ago, each man was held for approximately thirty-two hours, so there’s a cool down period of, on average, two weeks, less with each murder as the killer becomes more confident. That means that the killer isn’t wandering about aimlessly, he’s got a system, and the system works.”

John heads over to the landline, checking for messages. “So they all must have been to the same place, at least once, during that two week period?”

“It would seem the most logical conclusion.” 

“Right,” John says, in that tone of voice that implies a perfectly simple solution is anything but. “That’ll be nice and easy then. A bit like finding one book out of a million only we don’t even know if it’s a book we’re looking for.”

All they reasonably have to do is track the comings and goings of five men over two months and see where they trod the same path. Sherlock can’t see what the problem is.

X X X

£50 for each man you find in London who looks like John Watson

X X X

Four hours later Sherlock can see what the problem is.

There is, insofar as he can work out, nowhere in the entire city of London that the Five Johns all went to during their two week period. Nowhere. He’s missing something obvious, he must be.

Proper John is in the kitchen, contentedly swearing at a labelling machine. It’s not as though Sherlock isn’t perfectly aware of all John’s ‘rules of the kitchen,’ he just doesn’t follow them. John is going to label their cupboards and drawers and the shelves in the fridge because he was vocally annoyed about the skin strips in the oven (though he was actually curious). Sherlock is going to ignore the labels until he gets bored and replaces them with humorous substitutes so he can see how long it takes John to notice.

Sherlock is pacing in front of the window in his pyjamas, plucking out an accompaniment on his violin to John’s muttering in the key of F major. Until the killer makes a mistake, and he will, Sherlock is somewhat stuck. Not that he’s planning on admitting any such a thing to John. Dear John, who still looks at him with that same slightly ridiculous expression of shock and awe when Sherlock makes an elementary deduction.

He’s not going to settle down with a case still on, and John’s ill-timed kiss and his own feeble response seem like a suitable distraction. Not really his area, true, but never let it be said that Sherlock Holmes is afraid learning something new.

“Don’t touch the microwave,” he says absently. “It’s emitting radiation down into the oven.”

“What?” John says, startled. “Why?”

Sherlock plucks out the opening notes to _Watching Joey Glow_. “Why do you think I have that skin in the oven? Really, John, do try thinking.”

John puts the labelling gun down. “Right. I see. How dangerous is that to us?”

“Not very.”

“I’m going for a shower now. Try not to develop any mutant powers while I’m gone. And call hazardous waste so someone can pick it up before we both become riddled with cancer.”

Sherlock tucks his violin back into its case. “Don’t look under the sink if you’re feeling especially fragile of soul today,” he advises.

“You’re a dick, Sherlock Holmes,” John calls back and Sherlock can feel himself smiling.

He should know better, really, he should. He’s been here once before and that had gone extremely poorly. If this thing he has planned goes the same way, he’s not sure he’ll recover.

There are a lot of things about Mycroft that annoy Sherlock but chief amongst them is how easily and consistently Mycroft can play a role. He was popular with students and teachers alike in school. He had a string of incredibly vapid but beautiful women on his arm in sixth form and throughout university. He climbed the ladders of success not only with his intellect but with his ability to adapt to his surroundings and blend in seamlessly. Now, of course, he needs to do no such thing; his current position is better held just being his – as John put it – fantastically creepy self around anyone in a position of lesser power (which is most people). Anyone else is under the mistaken impression that he’s just like them. They can figure out what schools he went to, who his friends are, what circles he moves in socially, but they will never see the rest of the iceberg.

Sherlock, on the other hand, has trouble being anyone but himself for longer than a few hours and so has been alone for most of his life. He found this preferable, has always found this preferable, but his adult years have yielded him some unexpected comrades. And then there’s John. John who has looked under the sink, judging by the combination of laughing and swearing coming from the bathroom.

Mycroft, Sherlock is certain, would know exactly what to do. He would be able to perfectly mimic what a normal person would do and, moreover, he would be able to maintain the illusion for precisely as long as he needed to. 

“But John is my friend regardless of my…social difficulties,” Sherlock says to the skull.

Playing Devil’s advocate, the skull says nothing.

Nerves, Sherlock thinks; what an imbecilic way to describe cowardice. 

He makes the error of shooting up while John is in the shower – or rather, he miscalculates the dosage for the situation and the amount of time he has – and realizes he is utterly, stupidly, visibly, high. Sherlock gets dressed, buttons his shirt wrong and manages to delete that information before he can fix it. He can’t follow through with his plan now. If John sees him, he’ll know for sure that Sherlock is taking coke again. The evening is ruined but it doesn’t have to be wasted. 

“Going out,” he shouts, and is gone before John can stop him, evading Mycroft’s security as he goes.

X X X

Where ru?  
JW

Sherlock txt me back  
JW

 _VOICEMAIL_  
Sherlock this isn’t funny. Either pick up your phone or text me back. For God’s sake, call me.

Have you seen Sherlock?  
JW

No.fuck. Ill keep a lookout  
L

My network can’t find him.  
MH

No one asked you  
JW

Sherlock pick up ur phone  
JW

Sherlock you twat  
JW

 _VOICEMAIL_  
Sherlock…Please. Just let me know you’re okay.

Have you found S?  
Theres another body  
L

X X X

There’s a police car sitting conspicuously down at the far end of Baker Street. Sherlock sneaks into his own flat by going to the Volunteer pub just down the way, shimming up onto the roof, making his way over to 221B and climbing in through John’s window. It’s worryingly easy to jimmy open. He’ll need to fix that. Later.

Sherlock has had to hide his cocaine habit from Mycroft before; John ought not to be any sort of challenge. He tidies himself up – fifteen minutes in the bathroom is more than sufficient – and shoots up. The superior lateral genicular artery is starting to constrict, he’ll need to switch soon. 

This time things go much better. He checks in the mirror. He is pale and a little red about the eyes, but he looks mostly composed. Not good enough to fool his brother, but more than enough for what he has planned.

John is in the sitting room, surrounded by half-drunk cups of tea, fretting over his mobile. “Where the hell have you been?” he demands, getting to his feet. “You disappear and I’m left explaining to the police how, no, I have no idea where the fuck you are when there’s another body-”

Well, that’s interesting.

“Don’t you dare look at me that way.” John is angry, really, truly angry. He’s breathing hard, feet planted, with that wonderful, deadly calm. 

Sherlock is wracked with such feelings of magnanimity towards John. There’s so much he wants from him. Sherlock is selfish and greedy and he is used to getting his way but not getting what he wants. He didn’t even know for certain he could want this until recently.

“Shut up,” Sherlock says. His heart is going a hundred miles an hour (196bpm) and he feels invincible. He’s faced down gravity, and death, and he _won_ and now he feels like he can fly. He is invincible. 

“Sherlock?” John says, concerned now.

Sherlock loves his concern. He loves the creases on John’s brow, the worried curve of his mouth. Sherlock takes John’s wonderful face in his hands, and kisses him. “Shut up,” he says, “and come to bed.” John pushes him back, gently, but Sherlock holds on. “I didn’t kill those men,” he says and John takes hold of his wrists, holding on in turn. 

“I know you didn’t,” John says, and he wants to be angry still, but he’s staring up at Sherlock. John’s straight, but his body is flooded with endorphins and adrenaline in the same way that Sherlock is riding on the cocaine, and it’s easy to mistake one sort of arousal for another. Sherlock intends to use that. He’ll take it for as long as he can have it. He wants this in the same way John does, at least for the moment. He’ll take that too.

“But what about the part where you don’t actually do...this?” John asks, which seems a reasonable question, but not one Sherlock really wants to answer in any great detail.

Sherlock kisses John again, biting at his mouth, pushing him backwards until John butts up against Sherlock’s bedroom door. “I want to try this with you,” he clarifies. “I’ve been thinking about it.”

“I swear you’re difficult on purpose,” John complains as Sherlock pulls back long enough to drag John’s cardigan off and open the door. “Is that what you’ve been off doing? Can’t you just process things like a human being once and a while?”

There’s a slightly hysterical laugh caught in Sherlock’s chest so he rips his own shirt off over his head to stifle it. It’s hot in the room, almost unbearably so. “Boring,” he says and John laughs. He hesitates for a moment by the lamp but leaves it off, hovering nervously. Good, it will help conceal Sherlock’s symptoms.

Sherlock unbuttons his flies – God, he’s actually hard, stomach flipping over pleasantly – as he follows John into the bedroom. He pushes John back down onto the bed, crawling up after. John’s pupils are blown; he’s wide-eyed, hands gripping at Sherlock’s hips. He’s staring at Sherlock with the same flattering look he gets when Sherlock says something he thinks is especially clever and when Sherlock strips out of his trousers John swallows audibly.

John is straight, Sherlock thinks, with a growing sense of joy. “You’ve not done this before,” he says and John shakes his head no. 

“Good,” Sherlock says. He’s smiling, can feel it stretching his face, manic and intent. They can be first together. He’s truly, literally dizzy with everything he’s feeling, heart going so fast he thinks he’ll never catch his breath again. This is what people, ordinary people, talk about, then. Why they’re so stupid about a boring bodily urge. There aren’t bells ringing in his ears, just the sound of his heart and a rising tone. He feels like he’s burning up with it but he’s not sweating. Le petit mort, he thinks.

“Sherlock?” John says and suddenly he’s not exhibiting classic signs of arousal, he’s worried. “Sherlock…Jesus Christ.”

He rolls out from under Sherlock a handful of seconds before Sherlock collapses and Sherlock is aware of an intense pain in his chest, sees John kneel over him jamming the heels of his hands into Sherlock’s diaphragm, shouting for Mrs. Hudson to call 999.

X X X

Had a word; you’ll  
have no trouble from the  
doctors getting in.  
MH

X X X

Sherlock is handcuffed to the metal railing of his hospital bed and his brother is in the room. This, embarrassingly enough, is not the first time this has happened.

When Mycroft was a child, so Sherlock has been told, he was a quiet, studious boy. Frighteningly smart, but well-mannered, seen but not heard. His brother likes routine and order and Sherlock suspects that his desire to control everything – his ‘helicopter parenting’ of Sherlock when they were both young, his silent club, his love affair with the CCTV of the city, his meddling – stems from his desire to control the overwhelming overload of information he processes every second he is awake.

Sherlock threw tantrums, destroyed things, occasionally bit people. His brother was his only friend and as the smartest person Sherlock knew (smarter than him, always so frustratingly smarter than him), wasn’t dull. He could end the tantrums, distract Sherlock from his black moods. Then, when Sherlock was eleven, Mycroft left him alone while he went off to seamlessly blend in at university and Sherlock has never quite forgiven him for that. He doesn’t think Mycroft really understands the vicious, deliberately cruel, unhappy teenager he became and that was the end of all that. From there Mycroft was a man in government with a sociopathic junkie brother. Sherlock became a problem; Mycroft became a thorn in Sherlock’s side. And then he told Moriarty things that he really, really shouldn’t have done.

Sherlock thinks he’s well within his rights to be angry and continue being angry until they’re both cold in the ground but Mycroft is down to his shirtsleeves, his hair is out of place, and he looks tired and older than he is; Sherlock has the sneaking suspicion that he’s frightened Mycroft. He is perfectly aware that he is the reason Mycroft knows caring is not an advantage.

Sherlock is unaccustomed to giving in, giving an inch, but he’s groggy from the benzos they’ve given him, he has a throbbing headache, and there’s something heavy in his guts that feels a little like shame. He doesn’t want to fight a war on so many fronts anymore. Maybe it’s time they got back on the same side.

“I killed six people,” Sherlock admits out loud for the first time. He thought he might tell John, eventually, but saying it to his brother, who is as unerringly cold as he himself runs hot, is liberating. Mycroft holds almost no value to individual human lives and Sherlock has wanted to kill people before, but not like that. Not in a way he actually meant.

Over in his chair Mycroft slumps fractionally. He looks so much like their mother in the harsh light. Hard, patrician angles softened by weight and age. He’s definitely gaining weight again. Sherlock manages to bite his tongue. “I won’t let them put you in prison,” Mycroft says, fingers of one hand pressed against his face, in the corner of one eye, “but you understand, don’t you Sherlock? You can’t live freely anymore.” He looks at Sherlock, all that attention and unending patience focused on him. “I will protect you.”

It would be unkind to point out that he’s already failed quite badly at that since it’s obvious and they both know it. Sherlock finds it in him not to be unkind.

“Prison,” Sherlock says with great distaste. “There’s nothing at all to link me to the deaths. I merely bring it up because the entire endeavour took significantly more cunning and patience than I thought it would and I will concede patience and the necessity of the web, of the long game, is not my preferred way to work. The cocaine helped and now…well.”

Mycroft manages not to say anything about how Sherlock has an addictive personality and nearly killed himself for no good reason at all. They are doing very well so far.

“Where’s John?”

Mycroft sighs. “Working through his minor emotional breakdown in the chapel. Sherlock, you know you can’t see him again.”

“Why not?” Sherlock demands, struggling to sit up. The monitors start to blip along at an elevated rate, as though Mycroft needed any more advantage over him. Sherlock rattles the cuff, fury rising up. “It’s one thing for the Met to behave like imbeciles, but I expect a little more from you.”

“I know you care for him,” Mycroft says, and is that hesitation in his voice? Genuine hesitation, not an affectation? “Perhaps when you are a little better, but Sherlock, to know what you did to those men…it’s going to upset him, no matter how you meant it.”

Sherlock scowls at his brother. “No matter how I- They were going to kill Lestrade, and Mrs. Hudson, and…” It’s not his fault it takes him so long to catch on. He’s sluggish with the valium and he wants John because he’s got an irrational fear that if he doesn’t do something amazing, very soon, to prove he’s not a total imbecile, John might disappear. “Not the other Johns,” Sherlock says through clenched teeth. “Moriarty’s men. I killed Moriarty’s men who were threatening to shoot the people I care about.” He’s starting to get loud. 

Mycroft – and what’s his excuse for being so simple today? – actually has the gall to smile at him. It’s very nearly a laugh, and a relieved one at that. “Well that’s a horse of a rather different colour and one I suggest you keep to yourself.”

“Really? Is that what you suggest?” Sherlock says, viciously snide. “I can’t believe you thought I was the ‘Baker street butcher.’”

The years fall off Mycroft as he composes himself. “I’m informed you were found in a compromising position, near-fatally high, no alibi for the murders, and you were rambling deliriously about proper Johns and other Johns, and listing off minor physical differences even Watson wouldn’t notice which rather suggests you have spent altogether too much time cataloging your flatmate’s naked body – a body I highly doubt he knew you were staring at. Forgive me if I didn’t leap to the conclusion that you are exactly as fallible and stupid as everyone else about affairs of the heart.” Mycroft stands, sliding his jacket on, but then he puts a hand over Sherlock’s, careful of the cannula there. He leans over and presses a kiss to Sherlock’s hair. “I’m glad you’re not dead, little brother,” he says, “get off the cocaine,” and is gone before Sherlock can pick up his jaw from the floor.

His next visitor, a minute later, is not John. Sherlock bares his teeth in an expression somewhere between a grin and a snarl. “I want to go home,” he said, rattling the cuff again.

“Yeah,” DI Jenison says. “Not gonna happen, mate. You’re under arrest on suspicion of murder. Once the doc says you’re good to go, you’ll be coming with us.” He flips open a little notebook. “But while we’re both here, you can answer a few questions.”

Trust Mycroft to stop meddling at the least convenient times. If he wanted to, Sherlock assumes he could make the police go away. But Sherlock asked him to keep his nose out, and so now that there’s no doubt in Mycroft’s mind that Sherlock _can_ get himself out of this mess, he’s going to leave him to it. 

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “The thigh,” he says. “It wasn’t cut up this time, was it?” He heaves a massive sigh and turns his head to stare out the window. “Check your CCTV. I spent two days in New Scotland Yard solving cold cases. Until then, I want you to leave me alone. No, wait, get John, and then leave me alone.”

He gets neither of those things.

X X X

I’m in room 341  
SH

This is Sherlock btw  
I borrowed someones phone  
SH

I say borrowed…  
SH

They’re still banging on about arresting me  
ought to make Lestrade happy  
SH

Stop sulking it doesn’t suit you  
SH

X X X

Sherlock is in hospital for two days and John does not come and visit Sherlock even once. He isn’t there to offer scathing commentary about NHS deficits and how he’s had to do more with less while being shot at. He isn’t there when the doctor releases him into the custody of the Met. He isn’t there at NSY when they walk Sherlock through the Serious Crimes division in handcuffs and lock him in an interrogation room.

Sherlock sees Lestrade on the way in. He’s watching Sherlock through the windows of his office with a helpless expression on his face. No doubt he’s being kept far, far away from this case, though it more than falls under his jurisdiction. Lestrade’s gaze flicks past Sherlock, checking for John; checking to see how pissed off John is and if he’s likely to punch anyone important again. Sherlock knows the instant Lestrade realizes he’s on his own again because Lestrade says the word “Fuck” so clearly that even someone without Sherlock’s ability to lip-read would know what he said.

Jenison leaves Sherlock in the interrogation room alone for an hour. It’s cold, more so than Jenison probably intended, but Sherlock’s lost weight since he went haring off around the world trying to kill seasoned assassins. He’s shivering when Jenison comes back in, his hands and feet are freezing and he’s uncomfortable enough to wish Jenison had brought him a cup of the revolting swill the Met likes to pretend is coffee. It’s been fifty-three hours since Sherlock last slept if you count passing out and nearly dying because of a cocaine binge as sleeping, and close to six days if you don’t. He is nearing the proverbial wall and sooner or later, he is going to hit it, and hard.

Jenison has an unpleasantly nasal voice and a stack of paperwork Sherlock hasn’t seen in a while. He fans it out knowing full well Sherlock will be able to read it, though it’s upside-down. 

“You have the CCTV tapes,” Sherlock says because they wouldn’t have brought in the unfortunately myriad psych exams Sherlock suffered through in his younger days like they’re even worth the price of the paper they’ve been faxed over on if they hadn’t.

“Until there’s evidence to prove they haven’t been tampered with, you’re still on the hook for the murders,” Jenison says.

Trying to prove a negative. Genius. Sherlock sighs and shifts in his cold metal chair. It’s hurting his Ischial Tuberosity and he wants out of the handcuffs but he doesn’t have so much as a pin to work with. “Let me see the crime scene photos and I’ll tell you everything,” Sherlock says.

Jenison’s face twists into a sneer. “Not likely, mate. Not getting that in here so you can jerk off to it.”

Sherlock’s left knee is jittering near uncontrollably and Sherlock hasn’t got the energy to quit a behaviour that is clearly annoying Jenison. “All right,” he drawls. He is certain that in this battle of nerves he will outlast Jenison, which is just sad really.

“Let’s talk about your Antisocial Personality Disorder,” Jenison says with relish. “I know you prefer ‘sociopath’ though, I can use that if you like.” He taps one of the bits of paper meaningfully. “Says here you’ve got all the classic signs. Lack of social norms, deceitfulness, manipulative, impulsivity, irritability, reckless disregard for safety, consistent irresponsibility, lack of remorse…”

When Sherlock was fourteen he was sectioned. The records are sealed, but they’re not impossible to get to. After he was expelled from Eton and sent to Harrow, Sherlock was found performing an experiment on a dead dog. Though he hadn’t actually killed it himself he had brought it back to the school, stolen lab equipment and made a bit more of a mess than he’d thought. They didn’t believe he hadn’t killed the dog, but there was no proof either way. He was put on probation. Then there was the incident with the cholera strain he’d put in the water system in the sixth form dormitory. That he had done on purpose and the school reported him and he was taken away.

He lost nearly two years of his life to a closed-ward hospital. No matter how many times he escaped and made it home, they always brought him back. He knows Mycroft was never told, but how could he not have known? The medication dulled his mind and having it forced upon him made him furious and violent. A cycle that went around and around and around until he finally broke out one last time, hitchhiked to where Mycroft was doing his Masters and begged him to help. It was also the last time he asked Mycroft for anything more than ‘go away’ because Mycroft only frowned at him and said, “Really, Sherlock, you could have been released months ago if you would only behave yourself,” as though it was some kind of time-out chair he had been sent to. And then Sherlock was taken back to the ward.

Sherlock was released into an out-patient program shortly before his sixteenth birthday with a script for medication he didn’t take and therapy he lied his way through. The next time he saw Mycroft, his brother had simply said, “You do it to yourself,” to which Sherlock replied, “Apparently not. Apparently I’m a sociopath.”

Mycroft smiled thinly at him. “If you say so.”

And he did. Because Sherlock rather liked the freedom being a high-functioning sociopath gave him. Some days he’s even wished his diagnosis was just a little more true (if he’s honest he does fit enough criteria to get him the diagnosis, but it’s still wrong at its core) because his life would be a lot easier if he didn’t care about anyone but himself. Now though, now that he’s being threatened with another sectioning, Sherlock is beginning to wonder if he might want to get that diagnosis taken care of, no matter how much he enjoys throwing it at Anderson. 

Sherlock manages not to shout at Jenison for a whole hour and thirteen minutes before his patience runs out. After he has finished informing Jenison that regardless of any diagnosis made over fifteen years ago, Sherlock has no interest in what is actually an extremely boring crime. He lets Jenison know that the only reason he is even helping is because John is involved. When Jenison questions his definition of ‘helping,’ Sherlock informs Jenison of the facts: he will be bald within three years, he has a lower IQ than most sixth-form students, and his wife is cheating on him with another woman and will likely leave him for her. He then requests his phone call since there’s no evidence that Jenison can be reasoned with.

No sooner has he made the request than two sharks in designer suits and expensive shoes appear, circling outside the room. Jenison has no choice but to let Mycroft’s lawyers in. They are condescending, ruthless, and very good at their jobs. Sherlock walks out of NSY in less than an hour once they get their teeth into Jenison.

It is because of John that Sherlock also accepts the lift from Mycroft’s P.A. whose nails click on her blackberry in an extremely irritating way. His reasoning is this: Mycroft wronged Sherlock when he told Moriarty even one thing about him; though it was Sherlock he wronged, it was John who suffered; therefore, Sherlock is calling in the debt on John’s behalf. He owes Mycroft nothing for the help. He might owe him something if he strangles his assistant though. She refuses to stop, even when he snaps at her; she doesn’t even look at him, just says, “Irritability, anxiety, insomnia…” before trailing off as though she’s forgotten he’s even there.

Sherlock is more than aware of the delights awaiting him for the next week while he comes out of the cocaine crash. He doesn’t bother to ask her if Mycroft’s had the flat cleaned, because the answer is yes and even if he hadn’t, John would have turned the whole place inside out by now. Instead he cracks the window for relatively fresh air and tries not to throw up.

John isn’t in the flat when he gets there, which is surprising and disappointing. Sherlock checks every one of the places where he hides his drugs and finds nothing. Mycroft’s people are certainly better at their job than Lestrade’s. There is a pack of cigarettes sitting on the coffee table and a note from Mycroft that tells him his sense of smell is going to be ruined if he keeps up the habit. Sherlock lights up because his brother is right, again, and being good is so tiring sometimes. 

That, and John isn’t there to berate him.

He has a headache, he’s exhausted but he’s not going be able to sleep now, and John isn’t there to make him a pot of tea and fuss. Sherlock is too anxious to lie down; partially withdrawal and partially because there’s still someone out on the streets of London who wants to kidnap, assault, and kill John Watson. John, John, John. John who is decidedly Not In.

Sherlock snatches up his mobile and rings John.

“I’m at Harry’s. Do me a favour and give me a few days because I’m so mad at you I can’t…I just can’t right now. Please,” John says before Sherlock can even open his mouth. Then John hangs up.

He was expecting John to be mad at him. He had, however, grossly underestimated exactly how mad John was going to be. Furious, seemed the most apt description. Going to Harry’s to explain why John needs to come home seems very unlikely to be a sound plan in any sense of the word. Of course, he’s not exactly of sound mind so Sherlock puts his coat back on and catches the first cab that has the decency to stop for a man who looks more than half-crazed.

X X X

999 emergency, what service do you require? Ambulance, police, or fire?  
Hello?  
…Hello?

_This call has been disconnected_

X X X

It’s Harry who answers the door, not John. She’s approximately five-three, a hundred and fifty pounds, broad shouldered and wide hipped, hair bleached white-blonde and cut almost as short as John’s. She crosses her arms over her substantial chest and glowers at him. She works in digital media of some sort – graphic design judging by her calluses and the grooves on her fingers.

“He’s not in,” she says, bodily blocking the door. “Now do us all a favour and fuck off.”

John’s shoes, from what Sherlock can see, are not in the foyer, ergo he left after Sherlock called, correctly predicting Sherlock would ignore his request and come after him. He turns his attention on Harry.

Harry is sober, but she will start drinking the minute it’s five pm. She is binge drinking, but not drinking in the mornings anymore. Right now it’s wine because vodka just doesn’t do it the way it used to. The hangovers are vicious. She likes having John around, hates his quiet, doctor’s disapproval, hates his nightmares, hates his intermittent tremor, hates the war. She knows she’s his last resort and resents that, but if anyone knows about handling a gay crisis, she’s John’s best (only) option. She knows where John has gone.

“Someone is trying to kill him,” Sherlock says.

Harry, a Watson for all her flaws, holds her ground. “I know,” she says but her shoulders are a little less firm.

Sherlock doesn’t bother with a façade. He is cold and immovable, bigger than her, stronger, and dangerous. “He’ll be kidnapped,” Sherlock says bluntly. “He’ll be raped, tortured, and eventually killed.”

“He’s a soldier,” Harry counters. “He can take care of himself and doesn’t need some insane junkie fucking with his head. Now sod off or I’ll call the cops.” She takes two quick steps back and slams the door in his face. Touché. 

Sherlock sits down on the front step and waits.

Three hours later, John hasn’t returned and Harry opens the door again. “He’s not answering his mobile,” she says, choked. “He went to the cinema, said he’d be back in under two hours but he’s been gone for four. I called the police but they say it’s not a missing persons until twenty-four hours have passed.” Her hands shake as she holds out a familiar, ugly, jumper. The weight is wrong, something is wrapped in it.

The Sig.

Sherlock tastes bile in the back of his throat. He pushes his way inside the flat, tearing off his coat and takes the bundle from Harry. The holster is too small in some places and too big in others. Sherlock sticks the gun in the pocket of his coat and has done with it. His heart is pounding again and for a moment Sherlock wishes insanely for cocaine. He feels paralysed.

“He said he was only going to the cinema,” she says, clenching her fists impotently. 

“Which one?” he demands, noting that Harry used to beat up kids in the schoolyard for her little, little brother until those children started calling her cruel names, and then it was John’s turn. She used to have some asinine pet name for him, pit-bull, or bulldog, or something. It would explain the rather bizarre birthday gift she got John: a hideous picture of dogs playing poker that had made John laugh – an attempt to renew their camaraderie of their youth.

He knows this, he knows all this but he doesn’t know how this killer is finding his victims, can’t trace it back to the murderer.

Harry shrugs helplessly. “There’s an Odeon a few streets over. Probably that one.”

“Call Lestrade, he’s a DI at the Met, tell him to call Mycroft,” Sherlock says and takes off at a dead sprint, brain finally kicking in, slow though, too slow, as he maps out the fastest route there. He doesn’t have any useful identification on him. No police badges, or disguises, but he barges up to the front of the queue before he realizes there’s no way this bored, spotty teenager is going to remember John because she’s an idiot. He pushes back towards the door again and then stops in the middle of the room, tangled in the snaking queue.

Everyone in the lobby is staring at him like he’s lost his mind. Their stupid faces gaping at him and he knows everything about them, useless, irrelevant things. He’s missing something.

A couple of kids push past him, tucking their tickets into pockets and wallets, a later showing, probably going to the pub for a pint beforehand, if they can blag their way in. The bright flash of green paper is familiar though. John Five had been to the cinema in the two weeks before he died; still had the torn stub in his pile of discarded receipts. 

It all cascades together, crashing down on him like water. The slips of bright green in wastepaper baskets in the flats, forgotten in coat pockets, run through the laundry in jeans. But all the Johns ( _all_ of them, even Sherlock’s, now) had been to different cinemas, different locations. No one member of the staff would have occasion to visit seven different theatres and hanging out in the lobby is suspicious, it would have drawn attention, the way he is doing.

A man walks up to him, hand out as though he means to touch Sherlock. He is blank, no face, no facts, as Sherlock turns all his attention on the possibilities. Who would have had access to all the locations? Who could have sat there for hours, watching for the right man? “You alright, mate?” the man says.

“Security,” Sherlock says, the word punched out of him. “Of course!”

“Yeah, I’m security…”

Sherlock grabs hold of the man. “Other than you, what sort of security do you have? Who monitors your CCTV?”

“Sir, if you’d like to report-”

Sherlock’s grip tightens. “Who monitors your CCTV?” he demands in a voice that’s far too calm for how he feels. Data: This man is afraid of him. He is hurting him. 

Sherlock feels like a conduit right now; information streaming in – floor plans of the cinema, details about the films playing, the staff, the customers, the statistical odds of John choosing one film over another. Everything he knows about the case already is repeating through his head. Everything he learned about the murders through looking at the bodies of the first five Johns. What it would have been like for the victims. How long John Watson has before he’s past saving. He hears sirens in the distance.

Sherlock doesn’t have time for this. He shoves the man away, climbs up onto the ticket booth and rips the nearest camera off the wall. People are laughing now, calling their friends, getting out their phones. Sherlock sees the manufacturer of the cameras, the number of this particular one, notes the sticker that informs patrons they are being monitored, notes the company.

He drops the camera, still attached to the wall by a few wires. It smashes against the wall and drops to the floor, ripping out plaster, but Sherlock is already off the counter and out the door. There’s still time. There has to be time.

All the feeds from the local Odeons goes to a central security location, the internet provides. A central location in London. Anyone with access to those files and halfway decent face recognition software could track men who looked like John. Especially habitual cinema goers. Likely credit card information goes through there as well. He texts the information to Lestrade as the sirens become loud enough to drown out the excited murmuring of the growing crowd before they stop. Sally Donovan gets out of the panda and holds open a door for him. Three security cameras swivel to point at them. He looks at them, not at Sally. “Find him,” he says, and gets in the back of the car.

“Three hours,” he says tersely, clutching his head in his hands as the sirens start up again. He feels like his abused heart is about to pound out of his chest. He can barely catch his breath. “He’s had John for three hours.” It’s imprecise. A guess. Could be one hour, four, anywhere in between. 

Sally, for once, doesn’t say anything but the car speeds up, just a little.

X X X

My brother is recently returned  
from hospital. I would appreciate  
it if you kept him from relapsing  
MH

Oh Christ that means what i think  
it does right>  
L

X X X

Lestrade looks tired. He always looks tired and worried. He is a handsome man, by most standards, but the job wears on him. If John was going to, as people are apt to say, ‘go gay’ for anyone that they know, Sherlock would have bet on Lestrade. Sometimes he is pleased to be wrong.

“A call went in to the emergency services from John’s mobile,” Lestrade says, before Sherlock is entirely out of the black and white. “Standard procedure is to disconnect-”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock says waspishly. “Obviously. He had time enough to dial but not enough to request aid. When was it made?” Lestrade tells him. The murderer has had John for two hours and thirteen minutes. They will be at the man’s kill room. Possibly he has already assaulted John. But then, John is the one he really wanted. He’ll take his time.

Sherlock’s hands are perfectly steady when Lestrade leads him into his office. Every surface is papered with the details of the security company; anyone who would have had access.

“We’ve narrowed it down by gender,” Lestrade says. There are a lot of employees left. “Donovan’s got a team ringing round to everyone here; see if we can knock off a few more with solid alibis. Figured your way might be faster.”

Sherlock is not a profiler. He is good with concrete fact, with data. He is not good with people. He needs an assistant to talk to. Lestrade stands next to him. He is too tall, but Sherlock has worked with a skull before, this will have to do.

Lestrade is silent, going over his own notes and stack of paper, while Sherlock talks his way through the suspects. Every so often a police officer will come in and remove one person from their list – a suspect with an alibi – but not as often as Sherlock would like. Names and faces, addresses, family connections run through his brain, processing too slowly. He desperately wants to shoot up.

Sherlock is so focused on his task that he startles when Mycroft clears his throat, somewhere behind him. His brother nods a greeting, sits down at the table with a laptop, and begins opening a cascade of programs. “I thought I might be able to offer my assistance,” Mycroft says into the heavy silence. “It’s the least I can do.”

Under any other circumstances it might be amusing to see Lestrade’s expression. “Mr. Holmes,” he says carefully.

Mycroft doesn’t look away from the streams of information in front of him and he doesn’t reply. Sherlock described Moriarty as a spider but he was working off a comparison. Where Moriarty sat alone in his web, Mycroft is an ant colony, a master computer with other computers slaved to it. He is many bodies and his tunnels of information extend far beyond the imagination. He works with economy, functionally ambidextrous as he scribbles notes on a pad of paper with his right and types with his left. He couldn’t create the programs with their information flowing in and at the far end of those programs are his drones, his worker-ants, feeding him the data, but Mycroft understands it all.

Lestrade leaves Sherlock’s side and pulls up a chair next to Mycroft, detailing all the information that Sherlock hadn’t been allowed to see. He listens with half an ear, most of it is useless to him without lab time and time is something he doesn’t have, and turns back to the profiles in front of him.

Mycroft is significantly better at his task than Lestrade’s people and with each quiet murmur Lestrade clears away another suspect; Mycroft’s network providing alibis for those that otherwise wouldn’t have them. This one was using a bank across town from one abduction site, that one was caught on CCTV stalking his ex-girlfriend during one of the body dumps. He could have done this from his office. He didn’t. Sherlock isn’t sure what to make of that.

He can’t make anything of it; he has to find John.

“No!” Sherlock exclaims, spinning around to look at all the data. “No, no, we’re seeing this all wrong. We’re looking for a serial killer whose victims are diverse and random as Hope’s or that irritating fellow with the pencil moustache. But that’s just a by-product. He’s been watching John, all this time, he’s been stalking John as well as the others.”

“We’re already trying to trace IP addresses,” Lestrade says. “But there’s a couple that are bounced, or whatever it is IP addresses do. We know the stalker’s been on John’s site, that’s-”

Sherlock leans over his brother’s shoulder. “Look at the footage around Baker street,” he demands. “Check for recurring people who aren’t from the area. He must have spent some time observing first-hand unless he hacked your security system.”

Mycroft doesn’t bother to dignify that with an answer.

“There’s no way to track all the people on one street and narrow it down that way,” Lestrade says reasonably.

“There is if you look for these people,” Sherlock waves an expansive hand at the suspects around them. “We use his own method against him.”

Mycroft is already running the facial recognition software and the CCTV footage; he simply brings it up so Sherlock can see it. “A pebble in a shoe, a smile, padding in the cheeks can render this useless,” Mycroft points out, “and the murderer knows who John lives with and his involvement with the police. He’ll have taken care to disguise himself or I believe the Met would have found him by now.”

It’s embarrassing how pleased Lestrade looks at this compliment. Now Sherlock will have to listen to yet another idiot regale him with how charming and polite his brother is, how unlike him. 

“Him,” Donovan says, slapping a sheaf of paper down on the overcrowded desk. “It’s him.”

All three men turn to stare at her and she doesn’t flinch. “You’re not going to insist it’s me?” Sherlock asks snidely.

She rolls her eyes and ignores Sherlock. “He fits the profile, he’s strong enough to drag a man Doctor Watson’s size, he lives with an elderly mother, and his picture and Facebook profile make my skin crawl.”

“That’s hardly enough to go on,” Lestrade says, as Sherlock says, “I make your skin crawl.”

Donovan shakes her head. She’s got her hair scraped back – hasn’t washed it for a while now, with the murders and the overtime, she’s hoping no one will notice – and she looks just as tired as Lestrade. “Your brother makes my skin crawl, sorry Mr. Holmes, (“None taken,” Mycroft demurs) you’re just a run-of-the-mill Oxbridge arsehole who thinks he can get away with murder and who might actually be crazy enough to try it.” She stabs a finger at the man on the paper. “It’s not something you can deduce, Sherlock, it’s a learned survival skill and if this man was walking on the same street as me at night, I’d be worried.”

Lestrade picks up the photograph and Sherlock can barely contain his irritation. “You’re not taking this seriously are you?” he demands. The photograph is years old, useless data. There’s nothing that truly separates out this man from half a dozen others.

Donovan holds her ground. “His mum owns an old banger, not much but enough to stuff someone into for a short ride. Between his place of residence and work there’s a mess of buildings due for a demolition that’s been put off indefinitely because of the economy.”

“And you got all this from your what? woman's intuition,” Sherlock asks, but he takes the paper from Lestrade. It’s more of a lead than they’ve had.

“No,” Donovan says. “I got it from a lifetime of experience and three years in Vice. He’s a killer and a stalker, but he’s also a rapist. He’s got it written all over his failed relationships, dropped complaints from women he’s worked with, his menial job that gives him a sense of power… you can argue with me, or you can look for John.” She turns back to Lestrade. “Owners of the building don’t give a toss if we search the block and I’ve got Harris already on the paperwork. I’ve also got Julie Godwin in Vice looking to see if any of the boys know him. I’ll bet my eyeteeth he’s got a history of roughing up rent boys.”

“I’ll stay here and run the data in case the lead goes cold,” Mycroft says. 

Lestrade is already pulling on his coat. “Staying or going, Sherlock?” he asks.

Sherlock opts to stay. 

Donovan and Lestrade hurry across the office, talking about K-9 units and getting a medical team together. Mycroft raises his eyebrows at Sherlock. “You don’t think she’s wrong,” he says. Never a question from him. He thinks Sally’s right too. 

“No,” Sherlock says. “I just didn’t want them to stop me.” He takes off running and no matter how smart Mycroft is he’ll never even try to beat Sherlock in a foot-race.

X X X

If my brother gets to the scene too  
long before you I can’t swear there’ll  
be a suspect to investigate  
MH

Balls  
L

Rather  
MH

X X X

Sherlock is first on the scene because he knows London better than he knows his own body and he is furious and frightened, long legs eating up the distance. His breath rattles in his chest, calves and abdomen burning with lactic acid. 

The interconnected block of office buildings loom up, the grounds studded with construction vehicles and one sad-looking crane. He knows this place through his homeless network, knows which of the buildings are too cut into to be safe places to sleep, which ones are occupied, which ones are too-well closed off to get into. He gasps for more air and presses on, making a circuit around one of the office blocks people have been leaving alone.

It’s night now, low hanging-clouds practically sitting atop the roofs of London, a damp fog rolling through the streets. If it was some other man Sherlock was trying to find, John at his heels, the blog entry would likely read like some Victorian dime-novel, all lurid metaphor. But John isn’t there and Sherlock coughs in the damp. He feels light-headed, heart thundering against his ribs. There’s an open window on the second floor. Probably not how the murderer – Sherlock has seen his name but he just can’t remember now. Unimportant – gets in and out. It would be very difficult to lever an unconscious body up without aid and there are no signs of an accomplice or a lift of any kind.

He’s not sure how long it will take Lestrade and his extraction team to catch up, now that Mycroft is out of the game (unless Mycroft has sent in his own team; would he? it's too public, he knows they’ll get there, Sherlock doesn’t have time to wonder…). Sherlock could waste valuable time waiting for the police and their dogs to blunder around and if the killer catches wind of them, likely he’ll just murder John and have done with it.

Sherlock shins up the drainpipe four windows down from the one he can get into and clings to the brick with his fingertips, stretching from one thin ledge to another. His coat catches in the wind and threatens to drag him down but he throws himself ungracefully the last few feet and grabs hold of the windowsill before he can fall. Sherlock hauls himself into the building, a touch night-blind from the streetlights, and presses on. It’s a standard office-complex, gutted down to the concrete. Dirty rolls of carpeting clog up doorways and broken work-cell dividers are scattered and trampled on the floor. The wiring has been torn from the walls, stripped by industrious scavengers. 

He creeps down the first set of stairs, silent as the grave. Even the emergency lighting is out but he doesn’t dare use his phone as a flashlight. The slightest mistake could give him away. He can hear his own pulse: too loud. Sherlock forces himself to breathe quietly. Shoes the barest scuff of noise on the dirty floor. He is invisible in the shadows with his dark hair, dark coat, dark scarf pulled up over the pale of his skin. There is the sound of a door opening and shutting, far off he can hear the too-loud voice of someone having a drunken row. Sherlock carries on, down the next flight of stairs towards the basement. The door to the ground floor offices is locked or jammed, no escape there, on the way out. The stairs down are just as dark and grotty, but Sherlock can see light from underneath one of the closed doors at the bottom. He can’t hear anything, no one in the room as far as he can tell (which is rather far) so he pushes the door open, a groan rising from the hinges that he could do without. 

Murder scenes are very rarely what the general public seems to think they are. Most of the bodies Sherlock has investigated are either dumped unceremoniously or found in their own homes. It’s never the intricate set-up that the films John has forced upon him outline.

This basement room is cold with a touch of the damp. There are water stains on the walls and evidence that rats have been. There’s a broken photocopy machine tipped over in the corner and garbage strewn about and wedged in the space behind the door. A few creative young souls have graffiti-ed what appears to be a cock, a topless woman, and the phrase, ‘fuck the police’ on various surfaces. It smells vaguely of spilled cider and cheap cigarettes. Or rather, it smells like that under the heavy reek of sweat, blood, and evacuated bowels. Absolutely people have died in this dingy little basement.

While there aren’t any satanic altars or hanging sheets of plastic, (why are there so many hanging sheets of plastic in horror films?) and the ambiance is as grotty as usual, someone has gone to pains to set their mediocre stage as well as possible. There’s a stained wooden operating table under blindingly bright lights, a mortuary body block on the floor. Thick leather straps dangle from the sides of the table, their rough edges bloodied; some of it old, some of it fresh. There is a tray of surgical instruments beside it. One wall is plastered with grainy CCTV footage of John, newspaper clippings; a veritable shrine. And then the polaroids. Obviously taken within the last few hours. 

Sherlock feels something that he thinks might be horror. They’re autopsy photos, external examination procedure (if one were to find the bare bones of such a procedure from the internet) cataloging every inch of John in preparation to the internal examination.

John strapped down to the table, chest arched up from the body block under his back, John unconscious, John awake, John cut and bleeding…

Sherlock has just enough time to see all this, to think, ‘I’m too late,’ before his knees are taken out and he’s tackled to the ground. The skin of his throat is already nicked by the deadly sharp edge of a scalpel before his assailant stops. 

“Sherlock!” John exclaims, pressing a shaking hand to the shallow cut on Sherlock’s neck. The scalpel clatters to the cold floor. “I could have killed you.” His voice is slurred and he’s holding all his weight up on his arms, legs crumpled uselessly under him: He’s been drugged.

Sherlock rolls them over so John is on his back. “Are you hurt?” he demands. “John, are you hurt?”

It’s a stupid question. There’s a vicious Y-shaped pattern of self-done sutures holding closed a deep cut from shoulders to pubic bone that is still oozing blood. Staggering to his feet, Sherlock pulls his coat off but then hesitates. Probably John should lay still; several of the sutures are already tearing. He can’t get the coat around John without hurting him but John is already moving and Sherlock has to drop to his knees to help him, getting a shoulder under John’s right arm, draping the coat over as much of John as he can manage.

“Cocaine?” John says, as though he’d answered the door at Harry’s and the last few hours hadn’t happened at all. It’s a wildly inappropriate tangent considering their situation. Shock then. “What sort of idiotic, half-witted, self-destructive…”

John’s legs won’t support him. His feet twitch as the drugs wear off (not permanent damage, Sherlock wasn’t too late, he wasn’t too late) but Sherlock’s basically carrying him. “Where is he?” Sherlock asks. “Is he coming back?”

John shakes his head, but it’s not a ‘no.’ “Said he’d give me a rest, before we went on,” John says. “Managed to work the body block out from under me. Gave me enough leeway to get a cuff undone. I think he went for a wank, actually. I only woke up a few hours ago and he wanted me awake. So. How long have I been here?”

Sherlock can see it, how the escape went. The scrapes on John’s back, the deep bite of the cuffs on his ankles, the strained muscles in his right arm and the dislocated thumb from pulling to the left; the teeth marks in the left-hand leather cuff. He couldn’t have done a better job himself and he’s practiced a little escapology – useful to know with his profession. And then John had closed up his own vivisection wound, crawled off the table, and hidden, ready to kill his attacker. Army doctor. What a marvel, what a marvelous contradiction.

“The others are on their way,” Sherlock promises. 

John manages to drag a leg forward, scraping his foot on the floor. He’s leaving a trail of blood behind them. “I want to go home,” he says, shaking all over.

Sherlock’s body is exhausted from his run, crashing with relief and the stale wash of adrenaline, his heart is still hammering in his chest and John is heavy. Sherlock gets a better grip on John, wishes he could put John in a fireman’s carry, and demands more from his transport. They can collapse later.

The stairs are a problem. John suggests Sherlock take him under the arms and drag him up, which is so stupid that Sherlock doesn’t deign to answer. Instead he gets his other arm under John’s knees and picks him up. His own legs very nearly go out from under him and he staggers alarmingly. Each step is painful and his thigh muscles shake. He’s drenched with sweat by the time he gets them to the top and his knees do buckle then, slamming hard into the floor. He doesn’t quite drop John, but it’s close. They can’t stay where they are, out in the open. Staying in that horrible little torture chamber, waiting to get the drop on the killer wasn’t an option. John needs a doctor.

John is pale, skin cold and seeming bloodless. “It helps me focus,” Sherlock says as John struggles to keep his eyes open. “The cocaine.”

Indignation wars on John’s face with exhaustion. “It does not,” he says. “It destroys your health. It nearly killed you, you utter twat.”

Sherlock drags them both upright. “I can control it,” he says, goading.

“You had a heart-attack,” John says. “You tried to seduce me and then you had a fucking heart-attack. That’s not control, that’s…”

“What?” Sherlock prompts. All the doors and first-floor windows in this section are locked or bolted. It’s a fortress and he can get them out, but only through the second-floor window. He’s a genius, he’ll deal with it when he gets them there. God, more stairs.

John’s head rolls against his shoulder. Sherlock tightens his grip. “I took it so we could have intercourse,” he says, loudly, in John’s ear. 

John jerks his head up. “What? Why?” he asks. He can’t get his right foot under him anymore and the top is scraping against the floor. Sherlock isn’t carrying his weight anymore, he’s dragging it, but he doesn’t dare stop. Lestrade’s people could be anywhere, they could be miles behind.

Sherlock stops them at the foot of the stairs and wants to scream. The landing seems too far to manage, and that’s only the halfway point.

“You’ll have to drag me,” John says wearily. So Sherlock does, wincing at the way John’s legs thud on each riser. John tries to help, but he’s bleeding profusely from his torn stitches, must have lost at least a pint by now, maybe closer to two. 

They’re making too much noise. John’s got his teeth gritted so hard the tendons in his neck are standing out, but he can’t suppress the wounded-animal sounds escaping him and Sherlock is gasping for air now. Sherlock hears another door slam. Angry shouting. They’ve been made. There are footsteps racing up the stairs after them. They won’t make it out of here.

“Fuck,” John says, struggling again to get his feet underneath him and nearly causing Sherlock to lose his grip. “Oh, fuck, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s hands hurt from how hard he’s gripping the fabric of his coat around John’s naked body but he relaxes one hand enough to change their position, getting his shoulder back under John’s arm and heaving him upright with a burst of energy he knows comes entirely from fear. John needs a hospital and soon, they don’t have time for a fight. Sherlock doesn’t have the energy or skill to fight off someone who managed to subdue John so retreat continues to be the most sensible plan.

John jerks his weight around so they’re facing up the stairs, grabs hold of the bannister with his right hand – not his dominant one, but stronger, steadier – and pulls out three stitches in his shoulder, hauling himself upwards. They’re fucked now, utterly fucked, so Sherlock ducks down and gets John in a fireman’s carry after all. John moans and Sherlock’s shirt feels damp with more than just his own sweat; he can smell the thick copper of John’s blood. Sherlock can hear footsteps coming up the stairs, doors opening and shutting, and gets them to the second floor moments before the murderer hits the landing.

“Put him down,” the man says. White, early 30s, a bland, boring little man whose face Sherlock will remember despite his best efforts to delete it. He has a Taser in his hand and blood under his fingernails. The risk of him using his weapon on Sherlock is high and he’d rather not drop John. Sherlock eases John down, slowly, slowly. He thinks maybe if he can stall this maniac long enough Lestrade and his dogs might arrive in time to save them.

“Now step away,” the man says, motioning with the Taser like it’s a handgun.

“No,” Sherlock says. “No I don’t think I will. But I will let you leave here. The police are on their way, your only option is to flee, and as I am far more concerned with other matters, I won’t chase you.”

The man – Michael, that was his name – takes two steps up towards them. At such close range it is very unlikely he will miss when he fires on Sherlock. “Step away from him.”

“It’s fine,” John says. “Sherlock, it’s fine. He’s right.” Not what Sherlock was expecting to hear. “I understand. We…” He holds out a hand for Sherlock to help him up and Sherlock honestly has no idea what to do. “We’re meant for this, he and I.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock says. “You’re in shock.”

John keeps trying to get up on his own and failing. “I mean, better him than you. He understands. He understands me, all of it.”

“I will,” Michael promises fervently. He’s flushed with wanting. Sherlock feels ill, though that might be from all the running and lifting.

The dark little stairwell is beginning to lighten with a hint of pre-dawn and Sherlock can see the dirty floors and the chipped paint on the bannister. He can see cigarette butts and a crumpled up bit of newspaper from two months ago. He can see the pale wash of John’s skin and the blood dripping onto the floor. He can’t see a way out.

“Do something for me, for once in your life, Sherlock,” John says. “Help me up, and take me back. You dragged me out you can bloody well take me back.”

Michael lowers the Taser fractionally, and smiles with relief. “I knew you wouldn’t try to leave me,” he says. 

“Sherlock,” John says, and Sherlock doesn’t understand what’s happening, this is insanity. “We’re going to have to coordinate.”

Oh. _Oh!_ Wonderful, brilliant, clever John Watson.

Sherlock slowly wrangles John upright from the left, even though John’s shoulder must be an absolute knot of pain. John is breathing heavily, panting almost, but other than that he’s silent. “No funny business,” Michael says, watching him, not John, suspiciously. He has the Taser still pointed at Sherlock but finger off the trigger to avoid accidentally shooting John with it. 

“If I could just ask one thing,” Sherlock says, watching as Michael’s attention focuses in on him completely.

Michael sits on his arse all day watching security tapes and stalking people. It’s one thing to use a Taser on someone who isn’t expecting it; it’s another to be quick on the draw.

John reaches into the pocket of Sherlock’s coat, pulls out the Sig and shoots Michael. 

The report of the gun is deafening in the enclosed stairwell and Sherlock’s ears are ringing to the point of pain. John mouths something that looks like ‘check him’ but Sherlock can’t be sure. He does so anyway, propping John up against the wall in a sitting position. He peers down the stairs and sees the Taser has slipped from Michael’s grip and is far enough away that he can risk getting closer.

“You missed,” he calls up to John, snatching up the Taser. “You only got him in the gut.” He’s sure John can hear Michael groaning, but then, John is in shock and Sherlock can’t even hear the sound of his own voice right now. Sherlock toes at Michael with distaste, prompting him to writhe where he’s crumpled at the foot of the stairs.

Sherlock, satisfied he’s not going anywhere soon, hurries back up to John. He strips off his jacket, bundles it up and presses it over the incision as best he can. “I think I might pass out now,” John says apologetically, which Sherlock half-hears, half-understands through lip-reading.

“You missed,” Sherlock repeats. “You only got him in the gut.”

“I’m down two pints of blood,” John says. “I wasn’t going to try for a head shot.”

“You could finish him off now,” Sherlock says, sparing a quick glance to make sure that the gut wound is continuing to keep Michael lying down, noisily dying. There’s a crash from downstairs as someone breaks down a door. Hurrah for backup.

“Finish you off for taking cocaine,” John mutters, and then passes out.

X X X

We’ve got them  
L

There was never a doubt  
in my mind  
MH

Yeah right, but thanks  
Johns in hospital if you  
want 2 see him  
L

X X X

Donovan is coming out of John’s room when Sherlock finally gets away from DI Jenison and his insistence on getting an official statement. They face off warily. Sally’s about ready to crash; her hands are unsteady from the amount of caffeine she’s consumed recently. Sherlock is wearing hospital scrubs and is dragging around an IV because some triage nurse took one look at his vitals and got him a chair and fluids; he’s managed to lose the nurse and the chair but he can concede the merits of the fluids. Both he and Sally look like shit.

“They sent you to ask if he’s been raped,” Sherlock says, hating everything.

Donovan puts her hands in her pockets and doesn’t deny it. She’s wearing trainers that don’t match her skirt; what she wears to and from the office but it’s been such a long day she can’t bear her professional heels any longer. Sally Donovan and her trainers and her shaky hands know what happened to John and she’s not allowed to tell him, the doctors aren’t allowed to tell him, and Sherlock doesn’t think he can stand to go into the room and look at John. He doesn’t want to deduce this. “He wasn’t,” Donovan says, and Sherlock jerks like he’s been slapped. Rarely do people surprise him.

She still thinks he’s capable of terrible things and she’s more right than anyone but the dead will ever know. Sally knows they were lucky to find John alive and in (more or less) one piece because of what Sherlock might have done in retaliation, and she doesn’t even have the slightest inkling of what he did to Moriarty’s circle. He doesn’t try to put a hand on her shoulder, or move towards her at all. 

“Thank you,” he says, and it’s her turn to look surprised. “For…for being right.”

“Well,” Sally says, colour rising in her cheeks. “We can’t be imbeciles all the time.” She steps out of Sherlock’s way and begins her journey home.

“Anderson’s still a blistering idiot,” Sherlock calls after her. “You can do better.”

She gives him the bow-fingers over her head. “Don’t ruin it, Freak,” she says with what might even be a touch of fondness.

Sherlock drags his IV stand into John’s room. There’s a teenager with a broken leg and a concussion (drunken spill) in the next bed, texting furiously. No doubt Mycroft offered to get John a room to himself, but it seems equally likely that John, knowing the lack of beds and keenly feeling the sad plight of others, refused special treatment. Annoying, but Sherlock is good at ignoring people.

“Who’re you?” the teenager asks. She’s going to have a wicked hangover in the morning if she’s still this drunk after having her leg set.

“I escaped from the nuthouse,” Sherlock says. “I firmly believe that the Elder Gods are going to rise out of the depths of the Channel and the only way to save humanity is to eat the brains of irritating children.”

“Wanker,” the girl says, going back to her phone.

Sherlock brushes a hand over John’s hair. “Lestrade would like to congratulate you on your excellent marksmanship,” he says, “and for not killing him so he can put the bastard in jail.” For his part, Sherlock is rather disappointed the doctors managed to patch Michael up, but you can’t have everything.

He’s dying to see what sort of ham-handed job the surgeons made of John’s stitches but he doesn’t think it would be a good idea to ask. Instead, Sherlock tugs the blankets off John and slips into the bed next to him. John is solid and broad-shouldered, but Sherlock doesn’t take up much space when he lies on his side. He is careful not to jostle John’s injuries. 

John is half-asleep, soaring on the gentle wings of morphine but he lifts a hand, bandages around his wrist, and paws at Sherlock’s hair in something that might be a caress. “Y’all right?” John mumbles.

Sherlock is crashing hard. He aches all over. Even his hair hurts but John is warm against Sherlock’s cold feet and he even grumbles half-heartedly when Sherlock presses them between his calves. “Now,” he says, awkward suddenly because he’s not the one whose chest is stitched together. He’s the idiot who OD’d. “Yes, thank you.” Eventually John will want to talk about the Incident with John and the Cocaine (as Sherlock is referring to it in his head now – not to be mistaken with the Incident with the Tainted Cocaine, the Incident with the Morphine, or the Incident with the Cocaine and Mycroft) but Sherlock is hopeful it won’t be now.

“Gay,” the teenager in the bed over drawls out.

“By the time you get that cast off,” John slurs out, “your leg will be partially atrophied, about five shades paler than the other leg, and won’t match your other one – the other leg – at all. Just in time for summer hols.” 

Her mouth snaps shut with an audible sound. 

“Leg,” John says, still petting Sherlock’s hair, like he’s forgotten he’s doing it. “Leg. Who invented that word? It’s weird.”

Sherlock presses a hand over his mouth so he doesn’t wake up the entire ward with his laughing. “Go to sleep, John,” he manages, tugging the shoulder of John’s hospital gown down, just a little, so he can see one of the arms of the Y incision and the very neat stitches running along it. Another scar for John to carry then.

“I’ll show you later,” John says. “Glad you’re okay.” He immediately starts snoring the snores of the heavily medicated.

The girl in the bed over makes a sound like she’s going to be sick and mutters, “Gay,” again but Sherlock is warm and John is safe and Mycroft isn’t texting him so he only says, “If I were you I wouldn’t taunt a crack-shot army captain and his sociopathic partner,” yawns, and lets it alone.

He can’t sleep, not with the cocaine withdrawal, but he dozes a little, listening to the steady beat of John’s heart and the quiet whirring of the machines he’s hooked up to. When John surfaces out of the morphine haze, seven hours later, Sherlock feels oddly rested.

X X X

Please inform JW I’m glad  
he’s alright.  
MH

Tell him yourself  
SH

If you think he would be receptive  
to such a thing  
MH

Read S’s txt. Thanks, Mycroft.  
JW

Lunch at Diogenes once you’re  
fully recovered?  
MH

Sure. I’ll txt you?  
JW

I look forwards to it  
MH

X X X

The day John’s stitches come out is the day they can no longer pretend there isn’t something they need to discuss. John takes them out himself in the bathroom and when he emerges, he’s still shirtless. The raised Y-shaped scar is pink and tender and Sherlock desperately wants to touch it in the same way he still wants to touch the bullet wound on John’s shoulder. That John is letting him see without being asked means something. Sherlock has no idea what though.

“Right,” John says, and then pulls a t-shirt on. “Start talking.”

“The cocaine was a mistake,” Sherlock allows. He’s still clean. He’s finally able to sleep again as tedious as that is, and he’s managed to put on a few needed pounds. “When I was…I started using when I was… I planned on quitting when I came back.”

John sits down on the sofa next to Sherlock. “Okay,” he says. 

Sherlock stares out the window because he can’t try and deduce what John is thinking when he’s trying to explain this. “One day I’ll tell you what I did then,” he says. He means, what I became, but John has fought wars and probably understands. He also understands addiction. Sherlock gets up and starts pacing because sitting still is intolerable. “I won’t pretend I know why you’re interested in me. Your sexual preferences make it clear that you shouldn’t be. That said, all other evidence points to the contrary, and as far as I feel such things, you should know it is reciprocated.”

“What does that mean?” John asks. Sherlock sneaks a glance at his face and sees patience. John is waiting until he has all the facts before he reacts. He doesn’t let himself look any further.

“It means I wouldn’t be averse to adding a physical element to our relationship, which I’m sure we both agree, does rather strain the traditional boundaries of friendship.” Sherlock rearranges some of his papers while he talks. He has no idea what new order they’ve gone into; he’s making a mess of his own system. “For me, cocaine stimulates my sex drive. It seemed like a good time to see if we would be compatible. Another mistake, I will admit.”

John rubs his face. “You’re mental,” he says. “You know that, right?”

Sherlock decides he has nothing to lose. He sets two documents down on the table in front of John and fetches his laptop, opening it to a file he’s prepared specially for this discussion.

John looks at the proffered computer with raised eyebrows. “What’s-?” he starts then realizes what’s on the paper.

Sherlock took the liberty of procuring STD panels for both of them so John will be satisfied neither of them is at risk. Condoms sound tedious and moderately disgusting to Sherlock. Better to eliminate the entire discussion. John doesn’t bother with stupid questions, just turns to the computer.

“A list of things I find irritating, from least so to most,” Sherlock says. He wants to fidget, how pedestrian. “I would like to try again, if you are still interested, but without the cocaine it will be…difficult. Of course, my active participation and enjoyment isn’t vital, but if it’s an exercise you wish to-”

John’s scanning the document, eyes wide. It’s a long list. “Oh,” he says, getting the picture. “ _Oh!_ ” Then he just looks insulted. “Participation and enjoyment isn’t vital?” he says. “Christ you’re stupid sometimes.” He hums low in his throat and scrolls down a little. “But you can?”

“I can try,” is as much as Sherlock can promise. It’s not a romantic moment, he knows that. And John can be so dull when it comes to the traditional aspects of courtsh- Sherlock realizes that John is hard. Reading the list of things Sherlock doesn’t want to do. That’s…

John catches him looking and pinkens. “Sorry,” he says. “It’s just, this leaves a lot of room for a lot of stuff and…” He avoids Sherlock’s gaze by scrolling through the list a little more. “I, uh.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “Reading this is making me feel very creative.”

Sherlock can feel himself starting to smile, just a slight upturn at the corners of his mouth. Creative is good. “I doubt very much I’ll be able to sustain an erection sufficient for penetration, if that’s something you were thinking about getting creative about,” Sherlock says, examining his fingernails for minor nicks and tears. “It’s not medical, I just have trouble focusing on something as mundane as physical sensation for prolonged periods of time.”

“Alright,” John says, voice mild, though he is blushing furiously. 

Sherlock reconsiders his previous trepidation. John might, in fact, be reassured by that piece of information. Less of a threat to his status as a heterosexual if there is no danger of Sherlock being the dominant partner. Sherlock sits down on the sofa and starts to laugh. “We,” he announces, “are very bad at this.” He is relieved when John starts to giggle.

X X X

If you don’t wish to be  
irrevocably scarred for life  
I suggest you cease monitoring  
the flat  
SH

Can it be? Is today the day  
you at last become a man?  
MH

Fuck off Mycroft  
SH

X X X

They have sex in John’s room so Sherlock can leave if the whole endeavour goes badly.

John pushes into him with little stretching and a lot of lube. He moves slow, rocking in inch by careful inch while Sherlock pants and squirms, his body clenching down and relaxing without his say so. It’s hard to move with John’s full weight on him, he tries to get his knees underneath himself, but John pushes them firmly apart again and holds them there when Sherlock struggles, only managing to force more of John’s cock inside him.

“Oh,” Sherlock says, tensing, shaking with it. John, wonderful, careful, well-trained John Watson, finds his leverage and pushes in the rest of the way. Sherlock makes small, choked sounds.

“Relax,” John says, grinding in, sliding out just a little, and shoving back in again. It’s an effort, but there’s enough lube that the only friction is Sherlock’s body giving way. And it does. John is solid against him, forcing him open, forcing him still.

Sherlock’s eyes are screwed shut and he’s panting open-mouthed. He can’t relax. He can’t even uncurl his toes, or un-clench his stomach muscles, his thighs, his cramping calves.

John is rocking into him gently now, little tiny shifts of pressure. “You can,” John says, leaning over Sherlock.

John’s chest is tacky with sweat where he’s pressed against Sherlock’s back and Sherlock winces away when their skin peels apart and sticks back together. His skin is crawling now and he can abruptly relax but now he’s uncomfortably full, he can’t breathe…

“Sorry,” John says, snagging a corner of the sheet. He drags it between their bodies, draping it over Sherlock’s back, smoothing it down with one rough hand so it’s not a wisp of sensation, not an itch Sherlock will need to scrub his nails over until his skin is red and sore.

Sherlock flicks the head of his cock, which has gone mostly flaccid now. It’s shocking and painful and draws his attention away from any of the other sensations crawling over his body. He does it again, a moment before John pinches the base of his cock, which, oh, that’s interesting. He can feel John’s smile against his shoulder, through the sheet, but John is cupping his testicles in his hand and pulling them back, skin drawn tight. Sherlock starts to tense up again and John continues grinding into him, damn near shoving Sherlock up the mattress.

“Better,” Sherlock manages; his cock is hardening again, sluggish arousal. He gets a hand on himself with a tight grip, letting John’s movements push his cock though his fist. “I can…Just, just give me a minute.” 

John doesn’t listen because he’s brilliant. Instead, he gets a handful of Sherlock’s hair and pulls. Firm, steady pressure. Sherlock wants to write sonatas to John’s soldier hands, to his surgeon hands. It makes it harder to breathe, and so much easier. His face isn’t pressed into the too-warm pillow anymore, and his chest is tight from the strain on his throat that the angle of his spine is causing.

He moans. Almost silently, almost caught behind his tongue, pressed to his bottom teeth. Making noise is abhorrent. He can’t stand the sound of himself like this, and John is breathing hard and fast and Sherlock wants to hear that.

“Relax,” John says again, rough and low in his ear, hand slipping from his hair to press on Sherlock’s throat.

Sherlock struggles, more against himself than against John. He manages to release the tension in his body, but only for a moment, and then everything tightens again. John’s breath punches out of him. “Again,” he says, pinching identical bruises onto the inside of Sherlock’s thighs. 

Sherlock does, body strung out under John’s hands. A thick string of precome wells out of his cock and smears onto the bedding under him. He starts pulling off in earnest and barely notices when John moves the sheet from between them. They’re both sweating enough that they don’t stick, they slide – which is acceptable – and John sits back on his heels. His damaged shoulder is starting to give, and Sherlock goes with him, settling down over John, knees spread wide. John sucks on his neck, thick and still inside Sherlock, despite the trembling in his thighs that give away his desire to start thrusting.

“Some time we’re at a crime scene,” John says, “one of those dingy little flats we end up in, I’m going to fuck you in the next room, bend you over and have you right there.” He’s moving, ever so slightly now, small pulses of his hips that drag his cock over Sherlock’s prostate, hands on Sherlock’s thighs, on his chest, tangling in his hair again so John has as much access to Sherlock’s throat as he likes.

Sherlock rather enjoys listening to John’s voice when it’s dropped a third of an octave, and hearing him rattling off filth is unexpectedly delightful. It’s amusing to pretend. It makes Sherlock feel almost normal, without any of the usual distain he reserves for such a notion. John is much better at spinning fantasies than he is.

“Won’t get you off,” John says, and there’s a split second of hesitation in his voice, a momentary falter, before he surges on. “Won’t let you, even if you beg. Just going to come in you and we’ll go back out there, in front of Lestrade, and Donovan, and Anderson, and all those people, everyone you’ve called an idiot, and see how well you can deduce when you’ve got my come leaking out of you.”

Sherlock’s head tips back against John’s shoulder. John pinches his nipples and Sherlock comes. It hurts. Does it hurt? He can’t tell if it’s pain or not, and he stops stroking himself and just cups his prick against his belly, nerves firing all wrong. He can’t help the noises he makes then. Aborted and bitten off as they are.

“I know,” John says. “I’ve got you.”

He puts his arms around Sherlock’s chest but his hips angle back and his cock slips out of Sherlock. John bears him back down to the mattress, cock pressing between Sherlock’s thighs, still slick with lube, sliding over the bruises that are forming there, clever bastard.

Sherlock presses his thighs together and stretches out, tired. John hooks his arms under Sherlock and breathes hot and damp against his shoulders. “God,” he says, “you’re brilliant. Fuck. Sherlock.” John’s come is warm and thick between Sherlock’s legs. 

He rolls off Sherlock and flops onto his back. “One to ten?” John asks, as Sherlock cleans himself off with a corner of the sheet and then tucks a clean portion over John before curling up against him.

Sherlock considers it. “Six,” he says. “Four?” One is unbearable, five is indifference, ten is fantastic. It’s a woefully imprecise scale. “I cannot properly assess my reactions with such a-”

“We’re not making a chart, or graph, or questionnaire,” John says. He laughs, bright and delighted, and remembers to use firm pressure against Sherlock’s skin, and not light, teasing touches.

“It was…fine,” Sherlock says, stretching. He feels settled in his body like he does after a particularly exciting case. “Except the end.”

John scratches a hand through Sherlock’s hair. “Right,” he says. “Good except the orgasm.”

“It happens sometimes,” Sherlock says, unconcerned. Orgasms are boring, ordinary. There are far more curious things to explore. “What about you?”

“I like orgasms just fine,” John says.

Sherlock sighs. “I mean, this, with a man.”

John is quiet for long enough that Sherlock starts to worry. He doesn’t want to go back to being friends and flatmates. He wants permission to put his hands on John and the thought of having sex once in a while doesn’t turn his stomach as much as he assumed it would. Unless John hated it.

“Different,” John says at last. “Always figured it’d be easy for two blokes, same equipment you know?”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock says. “I know I’m difficult, that isn’t news. Did you enjoy it?”

“Yeah,” John says, and then more certain, “yeah, actually, I did. Christ, I’m never going to hear the end of it from Harry.”

“Tell me more about this idea of yours,” Sherlock says, because he has no desire to discuss John’s sister while he’s naked.

John is pitifully slow after orgasm. “I…what?” he says. 

“Your idea,” Sherlock repeats. “The one where you fuck me at a crime scene.”

John stops petting Sherlock, and when Sherlock makes an annoyed sound, he starts it up again, but stilted. “It didn’t mean anything,” he says. 

“I know that,” Sherlock says. He drums his fingers on John’s chest. It’s not his area, but John’s foray into dirty talk has given him an idea; he’s sure there are plenty of things they can do that don’t involve quite so much participation on his end that would be enjoyable for all parties. If there’s one thing he learned from the Woman, it’s that there is a lot of sex happening that doesn’t involve actual sex. So much new data to catalogue.

“Do I even want to know what you’re thinking?” John asks.

Sherlock grins against his shoulder. “I doubt it,” he says, reaching for his mobile. 

“I’m going to sleep,” John says, turning the side lamp off. For a moment Sherlock thinks John is asking him to leave, but John doesn’t move his arm from around Sherlock’s waist, so perhaps not. “You don’t have to stay if you get bored.”

Sherlock kisses him, because he can and it’s unexpectedly nice, and goes back to his research.

X X X

You might not want to monitor  
my phone for a while either  
SH

Yes, that had come to my attention  
MH

That’s what you get for snooping  
SH

How do you feel about bondage  
specifically sensory deprivation?  
SH

I’m at work! Don’t send me  
porn at work  
JW

It’s not porn, it was a question  
SH

How do you feel about sexting?  
SH

Oh my god I’ve created a monster  
JW

[img]  
SH

Thanks, now I have a hardon  
at work  
JW

X X X

Sally Donavan comes by the flat while John is lunching with Mycroft, presumably burying hatchets and such. She gets two steps through the door before Sherlock can’t resist breaking the news himself.

“Promotion, Detective Inspector Donovan?” Sherlock drawls from where he’s sprawled unhappily in his chair, contemplating the unending tedium of life without work, as she sits down in John’s chair without being invited to. 

“Yeah,” she says and Sherlock takes a closer look at her.

“And no more affair,” he says. “Wise choice. He hasn’t got the spine to leave his wife.”

Sally crosses her legs at the ankle and leans back, comfortable. “Not going to insult the police force for promoting me?” She looks better than the last few times he saw her, slept a few decent nights. She’s had her hair done, more expensive than usual. No, rather a whole spa day, either to celebrate the promotion or as a getting over it cleansing of her relationship with Anderson. Most likely the latter.

Sherlock cocks his head. “You’ve been passed over for promotion three times already. They said it was because of your age, or someone else’s skills, but obviously it was down to your gender and race. I don’t need to insult your professional organization because they made Dimmock a DI before you,” he points out. “They’ve already insulted themselves. He’s so difficult to work with. I’m hoping we’ll have a less fraught relationship since you are exponentially less stupid than he is, and clearly getting smarter.”

Sally takes a deep breath in and lets it out slowly. “Right,” she says. “So your brother didn’t pull any strings? Because I want the promotion on my own terms.”

“My brother wouldn’t bestir himself for something so trivial,” he says and then remembers he was trying not to antagonize her because doubtless she will have interesting cases he will want to see at some later date. “You don’t want his attention anyway,” he says, trying to backtrack.

Sally only rolls her eyes at him, and she’s pleased. The slight hesitation in her is gone now. “Obviously neither of us likes the other, but I think we can work together. I’ll let you in on the weird cases and if you manage not to be a total prick about it, I’ll solve a few mysteries you have about women. We’re not aliens, Freak, we’re no stupider or smarter as a collective, and you’re doing us and your own profession a disservice by not knowing a fucking thing about us.”

It is a fair trade. And she won’t ask him to work with Anderson. “Very well,” Sherlock says. They shake on it and then she pulls out a manila folder and passes it to him. There are three dismembered bodies, four sets of limbs, a locked door, and a bafflingly incoherent manifesto left pinned to one of the torsos. He beams at her, leaping up to pin the information over the mantelpiece. “Detective Inspector Donovan,” he says, delighted, “tell Lestrade he’s no longer my favourite.”

He hears the front door open and raises his voice so John can hear him as he comes up the stairs. “John! Cancel your plans, we have a new case!”

John, clearing the doorway, nods politely at Sally. “I don’t have any plans,” he says, brushing a hand over Sherlock’s back as he passes on the way to the kitchen. The look on Sally’s face as she puts two and two together and perceives their relationship is well worth the momentary distraction.

END.

**Author's Note:**

> Vivisection  
> by Leo Durrant
> 
> this love is a  
> warm-blooded  
> animal
> 
> but go ahead  
> study it
> 
> cut it open and watch the  
> blood rush out  
> to see what patterns  
> it makes in the dust
> 
> let the intestines  
> fall where they may  
> so  
> like Isaiah's  
> peeping wizards  
> you can read  
> our futures  
> in the rising  
> steam  
> and  
> visceral stench
> 
> just remember
> 
> when you're done  
> and you sew it  
> back up
> 
> and you've ascertained  
> with a certainty  
> that nothing is  
> certain
> 
> you can't bring it  
> back to life


End file.
